A Septet of Evil
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 16th story in the Ramble On series. 2012. Lucifer has escaped the Cage and the Fallen are searching. With help from the Watchers, Dean, Ellie and Sam have to find a way to contain the devil, raise an archangel, defeat the plans of a faction of nephilim and take the fight to the leviathan. Life is getting complicated. Again. No slash, no spoilers. Feedback appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

" _Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."_

 _~ Lao Tzu_

* * *

 _ **11.00 p.m. June 25, 2012. Steele, North Dakota**_

"Didn't we just leave this party?" Sam muttered as he poured a thick line of salt along the window ledge of the motel room.

Ellie smiled slightly, reloading her brush with lamb's blood. She finished the Enochian sigil of Gabriel at the edge of the Aramaic trap and closed the circle, lifting the half-full jar of blood and moving to the next window. Behind her, Dean poured a line of salt along the window ledge.

They'd been in Fargo three days ago. Dwight'd called about the vampire nest. Another big one, like Limestone, and New Orleans. Dwight, Twist and Trip had been watching the nest, built into an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, for four weeks. Sloppy, they'd said on the phone. But effectively the same process as Dean and Sam had seen in Limestone. Young girls turned to hunt young men, who in turn were sent out to seduce more young women.

Dean, Dwight and Twist had gone in, loaded with dead man's blood and silver, armed with machetes; Trip, Sam and herself had kept to the perimeter, watching the exits with long-range tranquiliser rifles. Only twenty-six, Dean'd said when he'd come out, followed by Dwight and Twist, all three men covered head to foot in blood and smelling like a charnel house.

The master had been inexperienced, he'd added later, through the glass shower screen as he'd scrubbed the blood from his body and washed it from his hair. Hadn't thought or known to set guards and all of the vamps, fledglings and older, had been beheaded while they'd slept; only a few waking, too disoriented by the spilled blood and their own psychic pain to put up much of a fight. Of the twenty-six vamps they'd killed, Dean had said that twenty of them had been teens, none of them old enough to drink legally, his frustrated anger clear in his voice.

It'd been after they'd cleaned up, at the motel on the outskirts of the town, that the first demons had made an appearance. They'd been lucky there'd been so few, Ellie thought, finishing the design on the last glass pane and returning her brush to the jar. And, she considered as she sealed the jar and returned it to her duffel, lucky the demons were young. So young their power had appeared to be limited to possession alone.

They'd been able to break through; Dwight, Twist and Trip heading east and south, she, Dean and Sam getting onto the 94 and heading west.

"How're they finding us so fast?" Dean asked, looking out through the designs to the street beyond. "We're warded."

She didn't know. They'd stopped here at eight and gotten adjoining rooms, run the salt and iron, and less than two hours later, Sam'd come back with dinner and the unsettling news that the customers of the diner had looked possessed, although in a way he'd only seen a couple of times before. He'd fired on two, making it to the car and back to the motel, but the hellspawn had been showing up in ever-increasing numbers ever since.

"It could be me," she said, glancing down at the wrought pendant hanging around her neck.

Dean shook his head. "Katherine said that was enough to hide you from anything under one of the arcs."

"Maybe these aren't following us," she said slowly, staring through the designs on the glass. "Maybe something else is telling them where I am?"

Outside the motel, in the darkness and under the pools of light spilling from the street lights, men and women were gathering along the street, moving slowly, not speaking to each other, their empty black gazes fixed on Room 19.

"It doesn't matter," Dean grunted, picking up the gear bag and pulling out the shotguns, his hand digging around the other weapons for the boxes of shells. "However they're doing it."

"Well, you know," Ellie said. "It really does matter, Dean."

"Cabin's safe," Sam interjected. "Nothing showed up there."

Dean had wanted her to stay there, Ellie thought, turning away from the window. It looked like he'd been right, although not for the reasons he'd given.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Dean fumed, tossing three boxes onto the bedspread beside the guns. She had the feeling he was holding back on his I-told-you-so. "What's wrong with them?"

"My guess is they're young," Ellie said, glancing over the room critically. She hadn't wanted to stay in Whitefish and it was too late to apologise for that decision now. "Too young to do anything more than possess anyone with a weakness, not strong enough to draw on Hell's power."

"Or Hell's power isn't enough to do anything any more," Sam added, lifting a brow at her.

"That's a possibility too," she agreed.

Dean had mentioned, eventually and not wanting to revisit the memory, the way Crowley's power had seemed to fail, allowing him to break free of the demon's hold. The demons outside were moving more like zombies than demon-possessed, she thought, watching the incremental shuffle toward their room. More trickled out along the side streets.

"How many now?" Dean dropped the bag of salt and walked to the bed, lifting the canvas bag onto it. He pulled out a box of shells, counting the loose shells in the bottom of the bag.

"Maybe thirty." Ellie watched them approaching. "More coming."

Sam shook his head. "I can't believe they loved Crowley this much."

"They didn't love Crowley." She snorted. "They just hate us."

Dean lifted his head, looking over at her. "Not all of us."

"Think they'll let me go?" The smile she gave him was gently mocking. "If I tell them I'm not with you two?"

His gaze dropped back to the weapons, brows pinched together. Loading the shotguns, he laid them out, side by side on the bed.

"They're probably only here because of me, anyway," she added. He didn't respond to that either.

Sam glanced at him. "So, uh, Crowley dying set the archdemons loose?"

Ellie shifted her gaze from Dean's brooding face to Sam. "I think so. Most spells break when the maker dies. He was definitely vindictive enough to use that threat against anyone who might've opposed him."

Turning to walk around the edges of the room, Ellie looked over their defences carefully. They had the knives and the Colt, but with the odds stacked against them so heavily, it would be better if none of them got in.

"What's weird is that most of the demons returned to Hell when you killed him. If the archdemons were freed then, I would've thought all of them would have to return. Obedience is almost as universal in Hell as it is in Heaven."

"That's weird, why?" Sam caught the pump action his brother threw to him.

"If these are all newly-made demons, and they can't draw on Hell for power," she said, stopping at the corner of the room and looking through the windows. "Even if an arc is still seeing me, what's the point of sending them after us?"

"Looking for something –" Sam's forehead creased up.

"Sam, kill the lights." Ellie backed away from the window, turning to look at Dean. "You ready?"

"Yeah." He handed her the sawn-off double barrel, and picked up the Benelli twelve-gauge.

The demons rushed at the motel, throwing themselves against the walls and windows, against the door, those closest to the building being crushed by those behind. They were eerily silent, the only noise the thump of flesh and bone against the walls, grunts and gasps as human meatsuits were pushed together and forced down, trampled and squashed.

A crackling sound came from the bathroom and Sam swung the pump action around, eyes widening as he said, "That vent was too small!"

"Ready?" Ellie asked, turning with him to stand in front of the door, the sawn-off levelled. "Now."

He opened the door and flattened against the wall as she emptied both barrels into the remains of the possessed human that had been forced through the eight by twelve inch vent, high in the rear wall of the room.

At close range, the salt and iron pellets drove in deeply, adding to the horror of the cracked skull, flesh peeled away from the bone, the broken collarbones and ribcage from which the arms hung, far longer than normal, skin and muscle hanging off in dangling strips.

She dropped to the floor, rolling onto her side as she caught the bag of salt Dean threw to her, pouring it along the threshold of the bathroom door. Over her head, Sam's pump action sent round after round into the walking carcass until the demon smoked out and disappeared back through the shattered vent.

Sitting up, Ellie dug in her pocket for fresh shells as Sam looked down at the pile of flesh and bone and blood on the floor, his face screwed up in disgust.

"That was … determined."

The thumping and grunting along the front of the room became frantic, and Dean lifted the Benelli, settling the stock against his shoulder, his finger resting over the trigger. Watching the hands that scrabbled over the glass of the windows, he frowned for a moment, his expression smoothing out to a cool, appraising stare as he found his targets.

Then it stopped.

The crowd of people, many broken, all of them bloodied, fell to the concrete walk outside the room together and against the red and blue neon light in the lot, the street filled with twisting wraiths of charcoal smoke, ribboning up into the night sky and disappearing.

"What the -" Sam looked around, walked cautiously to the window and looked down.

Ellie lowered her shotgun, turning to look at Dean. "Time to go."

He nodded. "What about those people?"

"Some of them might be alive. Call 911." Ellie picked up the guns and shells, salt bags and machetes and began to pack them into the three green canvas duffels that sat beside the bed. "Sam? Could you help me get this squared away? We've got to go."

* * *

 _ **9.00 a.m. June 27, 2012. Whitefish, Montana**_

Dean hunched into his jacket as his breath came out in clouds of white crystals.

"Dammit, Bobby, can't you take the heat from the damned walls or the floor or something?"

"This ain't easy, what I'm doing," Bobby retorted. He was fully manifested, looking as solid as any of them. Only the muted pallor gave away his state of being.

"We got leviathans doing the fuck knows what, plus there's – what? At least, three or mebbe four alphas still on the loose, cooking up new ways to either turn or feed on folks? A new rule in Hell, mostly like the Devil's seconds-in-command, and as added bonus, looks like Lucifer's still around, inside of Cas, with a demon nurse-maiding the angel and no way to get him back to the Cage. That about sum it up? I leave anything out?"

Ellie carried two cups of hot black coffee from the kitchen and handed one to Sam, the other to Dean. Turning back to the counter, she retrieved the third for herself and took a seat on the couch.

"Put like that, it doesn't sound so bad," Dean said, making a face as he sipped his coffee.

Bobby ignored that, looking around at them. "We got a priority here?"

"Lucifer," Ellie said. She tucked her legs underneath her and leaned back against the couch's arm. "If he gets out of Cas, if he can somehow rejoin the archdemons, it won't matter that he doesn't have his full strength, they have enough power between them to match anything Heaven can bring down, especially now."

"Now?" Dean asked.

"Michael's trapped in the Pit. Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel are dead. Cas needs to be freed so he can rally what forces he can while there's still time."

Tipping his head back, he closed his eyes. "Back to a war on Earth between Heaven and Hell. God, it just doesn't _get_ any better than this."

"How do we get Lucifer out of Cas? We can't use holy oil and Cas isn't even seeing us." Sam's gaze flicked between Ellie and Bobby.

"I think … I think I'm going to have to go to Egypt for a few days." Ellie studied her coffee, knowing what Dean's response would be. She'd been thinking about it for days now. They had to get ahead of what was happening, or risk Lucifer trying to restart the Apocalypse. "We need some serious help and Penemue is the only one I can think of who's strong enough."

* * *

Dean snapped upright, staring at her. "Go to – uh – Egypt? While the demons can see you?"

"It looked like they were all pulled back," she said. "Now's probably the safest time to go."

He couldn't argue with that. On the drive back from Steele, they hadn't seen any demon activity at all.

"You're thinking of doing this alone?"

She offered him a dry smile. "Unless you're over the flying phobia? Going by ship would take a little bit too long."

He looked away, his pulse accelerating just at the thought. "How long's the flight?"

"About twelve hours."

Shaking his head, he grimaced. The flight to Edinburgh had been six hours and he'd been almost comatose for it. He'd have a heart attack or his liver'd give out if he had to do double that, and tranking himself wouldn't give her any protection. Ellie turned back to Sam and Bobby.

"He's a Watcher. He can make the transfer from Cas," she added.

"Transfer to who?" Bobby asked sceptically.

Sam ducked his head, his hair flopping forward and hiding his expression. "Back to me, I guess."

"No," Dean's voice was hard, unequivocal.

"No," Ellie said at the same time. "The way he is now, he has to go into someone we can kill, if we have to."

Bobby looked at her, his mouth twisting down. "Bet the volunteers'll be lining up around the block for that."

She tilted her head in acknowledgement. "I was thinking of Meg."

"Meg'll never go for that." Dean thought of the crafty demon, and her ability to survive … pretty much anything. "She's evil as hell, but she's not stupid."

"She will. She loved Lucifer; she would have done anything for him." Ellie rubbed her forehead. "And she's strong enough to accommodate him until we can kill him."

Sam looked at her doubtfully. "Uh, not to keep coming up with reasons against, but if she loves him, how likely is it going to be she'll be okay with us doing that?"

Ellie raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, I guess we might not fill her in on the whole plan."

* * *

An hour later, Dean wandered outside. The air was balmy, just a light breeze ruffling the needles of the pines at the back of the cabin, shivering the leaves of the clump of aspens at the front. He took a deep breath, wondering how the hell he was going to be able to convince Ellie not to go.

A slight bang from under the truck caught his attention and he walked over, seeing a couple of slender jean-clad legs sticking out from beneath the engine.

"What're you doing?" He crouched beside them.

"Changing the oil," Ellie said, her voice muffled slightly from its proximity to the oil pan. "Should've done it before we went to North Dakota."

Letting out a gusting exhale, he made a face at her feet. "You know, I would've done it if you'd asked."

She wriggled out from under the truck, propping herself on her elbows to smile at him. There was a smear of black oil across her left cheek. "I know. It's just habit."

Lying back down, she adjusted the position of the basin and watched the oil running out for a moment, then rolled out, accepting his hand and letting him pull her to her feet.

"You're welching on our deal, Ellie." He picked up the rag that lay over the open engine bay, and wiped the oil from her face. "No more solo gigs, remember?"

"You don't think I've been doing anything but try to think of an alternative since Fargo?" she asked him.

"Maybe I can, you know, take something for the flight?"

The look she gave him was a complicated combination of compassion and exasperation, he thought. Mostly exasperation.

"How much help would you be then, really?" She shook her head. "There isn't a another way around it."

Katherine had acknowledged the pendant wouldn't hide her from the most powerful entities. The older woman had said she didn't think there was anything that could. Ellie had an anti-possession tattoo, inked into her back. So far, at least, they hadn't been able to find anything else that might keep her from view.

"How long is this trip going to take?"

He could already feel his stomach getting ready to tie itself into knots until she got back. He was still getting nightmares about the rock pillars in the cavern in the depths of Hell; about blood soaking into the base of a wall of rock and how pale she'd turned as it had run out of her.

"Um, it's twelve hours to Sharm el-Sheikh, then about three hours to drive up to St Catherine's. If he agrees, then I'll turn around and get the next flight out."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then I'll have to convince him." Ellie's gaze cut away and she shrugged.

"How do you convince a fallen angel of anything?" He already had a bad feeling about this, and she hadn't left yet. When she did get on the plane, he could look forward to at least two or three days of head-pounding, stomach-churning anxiety.

"He doesn't want Lucifer on Earth anymore than we do. I'm hoping our goals will align and that'll be enough," she admitted, turning back to him. "There isn't exactly a buffet of options here."

"No." There never was. Just the usual bad, worse and intolerable. "Is holy fire gonna kill Lucifer? When Meg walks out of the circle?"

"That's what they say. _As long as the oil burns, no angel can pass through it or he dies_. Lucifer's still an angel. Either he breaks free of Meg and stays in the circle, or he tries to cross out with her and dies. We have to believe in something, right?" She stepped close to him, slipping her arms around his waist. "Stop worrying, it'll be fine."

He looked down at her, focussing intently on her face. There were faint shadows and lines around her eyes. Thin white scars over brow and jaw. It continued to surprise him those seemed to add beauty to her face, instead of taking it away. Her skin was more cream than white, a scattering of pale, amber freckles scattered over nose and cheeks, barely visible in the sunshine.

He couldn't remember a time when the sight of her face hadn't brought some measure of peace and contentment to him, some unexplained feeling of hope to his soul and he'd never been able to understand the way that'd worked. There was something about her, some intangible, indefinable force that surrounded her, or came from her, he wasn't sure which. It made things seem not only possible, but likely.

It wasn't anything she said or did, it wasn't that she had all the answers or knew what to do, it was how she was … indomitable, he thought. She never gave in, never gave up, and her will to keep going, to keep fighting, was diamond-hard, carrying everything and everyone else along with it. It wasn't just him feeling it either, he knew. Sam'd told him about Black Springs, when he'd been bait for his brother. Had said she'd given him hope, wrapped up in solid certainty they could get him back.

"You look … pensive," she said, not quite a question as her eyes searched his face.

He shook his head, trying to shunt aside the unsettled feeling. He didn't want her to think he'd be a basketcase till she got back.

"Just … enjoying the view."

Arching a brow, she retorted, "You used to be much better at lying on the fly."

"Not to you," he said, pulling her closer.

"Not to me," she agreed. "This isn't going to be a big deal, Dean."

He nodded, glancing at the pickup. "When do you want to get going? It'll take about two hours for that to drain out fully."

"In about three hours. I'll do about six hours tonight and the rest tomorrow."

Over the last month, her energy levels had returned to normal, not even a sign of the crushing fatigue she'd had in the first trimester of pregnancy. He'd found it hard to stop thinking of her as easily tired and in need of maximum sleep.

" _We'll_ go in about three hours," he corrected her patiently.

"You hate airports and you hate goodbyes. Why would you want to come?" she asked, tipping her head to one side as she looked at him.

"Firstly, you are not going anywhere alone while you're still in this country; that was the deal, right?" he told her, wondering if her independence thing was ever going to change. They'd worked extremely well together, back when he'd been glad to not have to worry too much about her. Now, it was a slightly different story.

'Two, I get to spend an extra twenty-four hours with you," he added, his heart lifting as he saw her mouth twitch, trying to hide her smile. "And C, I don't hate airports if I don't have to fly and I'll put up with the goodbye thing because of the other two."

He saw her eyes widen a little and groaned internally. It was how he felt, and he wasn't about to start hiding those feelings, but she took a perverse delight in making him pay for saying crap like that out loud.

"Oh, baby, that's so sweet," she teased, laughing when he made a gagging face at her, his hand flashing out to grab her. She shifted backwards, moving at a surprising speed, and wagged her finger at him.

"Come on, lady with a baby here."

"Funny how that never stops _you_ from doing anything," he growled and chased her up the stairs and into the house.

* * *

 _ **8.00 p.m. June 27, 2012. Winnett, Montana**_

Ellie turned the pickup into the driveway of the small, single-storey motel and stopped outside the office. Turning off the engine, she glanced to her right, an involuntary smile curving her mouth. Hunched up between the door and the back of the passenger seat, his arms crossed over his chest and legs mostly stretched into the well, Dean was sleeping, his face smooth and relaxed in spite of the discomfort of his position. She watched him for a long moment. When he was on his feet, there was almost always some tension in him.

Unsurprisingly, she thought, opening the driver's door quietly and sliding out. There wasn't much in their life that didn't cause tension, recognised or not.

She leaned on the buzzer at the office door, going through when the lock clicked open.

"Evening," the man behind the counter said, rubbing his eyes with one hand as he pulled a threadbare terry robe around him with the other. "Need a room?"

"Queen bed, if you have it," Ellie said, pulling her wallet out and extracting the latest driver's licence and four fifties.

"Yeah, we got plenty. Sixty-five for the night, checkout's at ten," the owner told her. "Sign here? That cash?"

She slid two of the fifties over the counter and filled in the registration book. "Can you recommend a good place to eat for breakfast?"

The man shook his head. "Diner closed in Spring. There's a MacDonald's near the interstate, must've seen it when ya drove in?"

She nodded, sighing. "Not really my definition of good," she said, pushing the book back to him and taking the key. "Thanks."

"Not mine either," he agreed. "You'll find a good place in Jordan. Bit of a haul up t'87 but Stacy makes the best pancakes for a hundred miles."

"Thanks, we'll check it out."

Tucking the key into her pocket, she turned away, opening the door and walking to the pickup. The room was across the lot from the office and she drove into the slot and turned off the engine again, reaching out to touch Dean's shoulder.

"Dean."

He opened an eye, turning his head to look at her. "Not even going to try to carry me in?"

"Nope."

He smiled lazily and straightened, rolling his shoulders and opening the passenger door as she slid out of the driver's seat.

They pulled gear and personal bags from the tray, carrying them inside and dumping them on the floor beside the bed.

There was no need for discussion of what to do. Dean pulled out two canisters of salt from his duffel and tossed one to her, turning for the bathroom and back of the room as she turned for the front. Pouring lines along the window sills, across the thresholds of each doorway and around each of the vents, they covered every entrance and opening in silence.

The armistice was over, and defensive measures were once again their normal.

* * *

It wasn't more than fifteen minutes later, the room secure and the lights off, their clothes left in piles to either side of the bed, Dean ran his hand over Ellie's hip, and she rolled over, looking up at him.

The restless ache of desire amped up as her body slid against his, her lips soft on his mouth, awareness of every sensation, every touch and breath razor keen. The steady thump of his heart reverberated in his bones, pulsed through vein and artery and capillary, a drowning kind of feeling that slowed time, isolating each sensation and intensifying it.

The room was dark, sight gone, his other senses crowding in to take its place. He heard the rasp in her indrawn breath, felt the shivering of her muscles, tasted the sweetness of her skin and every response lit another fire in him, making it hard to breathe. Even sound drifted away as taste and touch and smell flooded through him and need slid along the borders of torment.

She arched under him, and he almost lost it right there, the heat of her moaned breath against his jaw, moist, silken muscles convulsing around his fingers, the involuntary ripple of movement from her, right down the length of his body. Louder than hers, the harshness of his breath; panting and shallow and raw, filled his ears, and his heart was pounding like a tribal drum in his chest. He covered her parted lips with his own, a temblor zigzagging through him when he pushed in.

His body was howling at him, but he resisted the impulse to move faster, wanting – needing – to make it last, no matter that it was torturous, perhaps because it _was_ torturous, those moment by moment sensations strung out to the absolute limits of bearability.

He couldn't tell any more where he ended and she began, her skin welded against his down the lengths of their bodies; her mouth, sweet against his tongue; the pressure and liquid heat of her enclosing him entirely. He found their rhythm, and stroked into it, and they rode it together, letting it increase on its own, nerve and muscle and bone and blood joined on a long crescendo. When he teetered at the peak, for a long, light-filled moment, she rippled around him again, and he fell, shuddering in time with her, until the last tremors had bled out of their limbs.

Dean eased himself onto his side, looking down at her face as she rolled up against him, her arm curling around his chest. Her eyes were tightly closed, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, his lips resting against her temple.

He wanted to say something, something that described the feelings that boiled and churned inside of him, but there were no words that could, that even came close. Feeling her arm tighten around him, he thought that probably there had never been words to describe what they felt, a chaotic mixture of love and fear, of passion and longing, of contentment and the yearning to be closer still.

It was something to have, to hold, to feel. Not to talk about.

* * *

 _ **5.00 a.m. June 28, 2012.**_

The room was dim and cold when Ellie woke. She stretched out, feeling the good aches through her body, the looseness of her muscles, careful not to disturb the man who slept beside her. Drawing her legs up and wrapping her arms around her knees, she looked down at him, the memories of the previous night filling her.

He looked younger when he slept, vulnerable in a way he never did awake. She suddenly found herself coming up with reasons not to go, excuses not to leave, and she pushed them impatiently away. Long experience had taught her too thoroughly that not dealing with problems inevitably meant worse problems down the line.

And the problem with Lucifer could get a whole lot worse very quickly if they didn't do something about it now. The archdemons might have been content to run Hell as they always had. If they found the devil, he would want more.

Shower. Breakfast. Chicago, she told herself, swinging her legs off the bed and getting to her feet. It would only be a couple of days, three at most.

* * *

Dean woke to the sound of the shower, rolling over, his arm sliding across the bare sheets beside him, knowing that she wouldn't be there, checking anyway. He twisted onto his back and opened his eyes, pupils dilating a little with the musky smell of the linen, bringing memory back, hot and close.

He could think of a lot of good reasons to turn around right now, go back to Whitefish, forget about the devil and all the other problems that were plaguing them. Letting his lids drop briefly, he knew he wouldn't mention any of them. Problems had a bad habit of worsening when they were ignored, and they didn't need anything to be worse – things were bad enough as they were.

He pushed aside the seductive and clinging memories. He couldn't afford to be distracted and thinking about the way it was between them was a guaranteed distraction. Turning his head as the noise of the shower ceased, he sat up, rubbing a hand over his face and letting out a deep exhale.

Shower, breakfast, Chicago, he thought to himself, not giving mental room to what would come after that – driving back to Whitefish alone.

* * *

 _ **10 p.m. June 28, 2012. O'Hare International Airport, Chicago.**_

"Um, keep an eye on the forum, I'll let you know what's happening through that," Ellie said, taking her carry-on from the luggage scales and tucking her ticket into her jacket pocket as she moved out of the line.

Dean nodded. The forum was untraceable, at least to the levis. He would've rather heard her voice, but they didn't know how wide the leviathan net was in communications and there didn't seem to be a way of finding out.

"Be careful. I –" He stopped, looking around the bustle and movement that surrounded them, abruptly remembering the other reasons he hated airports. "I don't – you know, I can't –"

She reached up, slipping her hand up the back of his neck and into his hair. He bent his head, arms closing around her, his eyes shut tightly as their lips met. The low charge sparked along his nerve endings like a slow-burning fuse.

This was exactly why he didn't like doing the goodbye thing; his imagination conjured all the things that could happen to her, all the things that could go wrong with stupid heavier-than-air machines, all the things that were out there, looking for them … and he didn't want to let her go.

Opening his eyes unwillingly when she broke the kiss, he tried to rearrange his features into something more neutral than what he was feeling.

"You and Sam need to be careful too," she said. "You must be pretty near the top of everyone's most wanted list right now."

"We'll be keeping a low profile," he promised, hoping it would stay that way.

Ellie lifted the too-large leather backpack from the floor and turned away sharply, heading for the international gates. She didn't look back.

Watching her until she disappeared in the crowd of travellers, he wondered if the faint prickle at the back of his neck was a generalised uneasiness with her leaving, or something more tangible. It faded a few seconds later and he turned away from the departures lounge, his gaze moving unseeingly around the terminal.

Fifteen hundred miles back to Whitefish was too much time to think, too much time to worry. He rubbed the heel of his hand over his jaw and down his throat, feeling the rasp of the stubble under it. _Just a couple – a few – days_ , he told himself, straightening and heading for the parking lot.

His chest tightened as too many memories crowded him; memories when a few days had turned to weeks, or months. _Cut it out_ , he berated himself impatiently. _That's not going to happen this time_.

* * *

 _ **June 29, 2012. Mt Sinai Desert, Egypt**_

Ellie drove through the grey desert as the sun slowly crested the mountains to the east. It had been years since she'd been here, but her memories of the roads were good; her hands automatically turning the wheel as the gravelled turning came up, leading her onto a pitted and rough road that would be far less well-guarded than the highway. There were only a few roads through the desert, all of them were easy to watch. She wasn't sure why she didn't want to go along the main one, but she listened to her instincts and they told her now that it would be safer to go along the slower, but less-travelled, Bedouin route.

The road wound through the _hammada_ ; an eerie landscape of sharp, rocky mountains and gorges, sand spills occasionally visible over the bones of the land. The sun's rising heat bounced from the stone and collected in the deep ravines. She drove carefully, coasting down the long inclines to save the engine, avoiding the washouts and potholes where she could. Nothing was easier than breaking down in the desert.

The route looked much as she remembered, and she came out onto the flat _reg_ as expected, winding down the windows to catch the cooler wind from the high gravel plains. Another hour and she'd be at the monastery. She wondered if she was going to be able to convince Penemue to come back with her, to face the archangel that had started everything.

She hadn't spoken to the Watcher for almost three years now, the last occasion had been difficult between them. He'd accused her of allowing her feelings to get in the way of what had to be done. She chewed at her lip at the memory. He'd been right, of course, not that that meant she would do it any differently if she had to do it again.

Destiny had been broken. No more rules to follow, no more prophecies to guide them. Just free will and freedom, the ability to act on one's conscience. She wondered if that made a difference to the Watchers, or to those fighting them.

" _The factions are getting stronger, Ellie."_ Penemue's gaze had been flicking around, his eyes narrowed as he pushed her along the teeming and crowded market street, his voice low _. "Not all of the nephilim will join with us, some have already gone to the Others. You can reach Michael, through his vessel –"_

" _No."_ She'd stopped dead in the street, turning to face him, the cries of the vendors, the push of people around them abruptly muted _. "I told you, that's out of the question."_

" _He has to know and I cannot reach him myself."_ The Watcher had stopped beside her, his hand closing on her arm _. "This is more important than a single man."_

" _Find another way, Pen, that's not an option."_ She'd stared into his eyes, the deep blue of the desert sky, trying to suppress the anger she'd felt at the request.

" _You can't protect him, you know. It will play out as it has been foreseen and he will die."_

She'd closed her eyes, the flush of fear and rage at the certainty in the Watcher's words drawing a savage determination. He would _not_ die. He would live. She would make certain of that.

" _Find another way."_ She'd opened her eyes and shaken off his hand _. "I'm not giving him to Michael."_

The memory was still bitter. She'd found a way to speak to the archangel eventually, to give him the Watcher's message, but Michael had dismissed it, ignoring the battle of the fallen on the other side of the world, promising his help only if she would deliver Dean to him.

And now the Watchers were much weaker than they had been, Patrick had told her. And the primary faction opposing them was much stronger. It seemed all too likely the Others would seek an alliance with archdemons, offer their help to retrieve Lucifer. They wanted to return to Heaven, Penemue had told her. Had some plan, some way to absolve their acts, and wanted to go home. She remembered the curl of his lip as he'd said that, his disbelief clear.

The big four-wheel drive thumped into a wide washout, and she fought with the wheel for a moment, easing off the accelerator and letting the torque of the heavy vehicle pull her out.

 _Concentrate on what you're doing, for Christ's sake_ , she snapped at herself, _there'll be time to work out this crap when you know for sure what Pen is going to do_.

* * *

 _ **June 30, 2012. I-94W, 10 miles west of Dickinson, North Dakota**_

The headlights lit up the mostly empty lanes of the interstate, the flat plains to either side of him hidden by the darkness. He'd been on the road for almost fifteen hours and he had another eight or nine to go.

On the car's stereo, Zeppelin played quietly, just audible over the road noise. Against the road, he kept seeing the cages, the faces of the kids, pale and polished and hard, their eyes glittering with agonising hunger; empty blood bags hanging against the bars.

The alpha had told him he was raising an army. He shook his head. The vampires were out-powered by the leviathans and would always be out-numbered by hellspawn. Or was it an army against the rest of the blood-sucking undead, he wondered? How many monsters had Crowley found and killed?

He started in the seat as the strident ring of his phone shattered his thoughts, jerking his attention back to the road. Reaching over to his coat, lying on the seat beside him, he dug around and pulled the cell out.

"Yeah?"

 _"Where are you, man?"_ Sam's voice was tight with tension.

"Just passed Dickinson, I'm about another eight hours out." Dean shifted his grip on the wheel, tucking the phone tighter to his ear. "What's wrong?"

 _"Go south. Now. There's some kind of demon convention up ahead of you, in Billings. We got signs right across the board."_

"What?" The whole country had been demon-free for days.

" _I don't know why, but they're spreading out. Looking for someone?"_

 _Lucifer_ , Dean thought. _Crap_. He could head south at Belfield, but it would take days to skirt Billings widely enough to be sure that he wasn't trapped on the edges.

"Do you know what's going on there?" he asked, running alternative routes and options through his mind.

 _"No. Just that it's lit up like a Christmas tree."_

"I'm going back to Indiana. Meet me at Rochester." There was no point trying to get through, if Ellie was as quick as she'd hoped, he would again be cut off, and he wanted to be near Cas, at least be around. He'd only be an hour or so from Chicago, ready to pick her up with the Watcher as soon as they landed.

 _"You want to see Cas? Now?"_ Sam's voice rose. _"Man, we shouldn't be drawing attention to him."_

"Yeah, no. I know. I don't want to see him, I want to be in the vicinity, just in case." He dragged in a breath. "Just meet me there, bring Bobby with you."

If the demons were nosing around Montana, maybe someone'd been talking down in the pit. Telling tales about Winchesters and their friends. Ellie was on a plane, halfway across Africa by now and safe. He hoped.

"Sam?"

" _Yeah?"_

"Any, uh, signs of demon activity anywhere else?" he asked, flexing his fingers on the wheel.

" _You mean outside the US?"_

"Yeah."

" _Gimme a minute."_ There was a clunk on the other end of the line and the faint sound of tapping keys.

" _Dean? Nothing really outside the States,"_ Sam said a moment later. _"Uh, just the usual clutter in Europe. Can't see anything in Egypt."_

"Good. Okay." He let out the breath he'd been holding. "See you in a couple of days."

" _Alright."_

Closing the phone, Dean put his foot down, looking for a turnaround or ramp. They had to be looking for the devil. He hoped they were. Looking so hard they wouldn't even think of tracking her. He glanced at the cell, lying on his coat. He'd have to get a message to Ellie, let her know the schedule'd been changed.

The off ramp signs appeared and he slowed, changing lanes and taking it, heading south for the 90 and glancing at his watch. Fifteen hours on the road and he didn't think he had much more. The next motel, he'd stop, catch some sleep.

* * *

 _ **June 29, 2012. St Catherine's Monastery, Egypt**_

Ellie pulled around the dry fountain in the village, finding a parking spot in the shade of a mulberry overhanging the high stone wall. She wiped her hands on her jeans, shaking her head at her nervousness. She had nothing to fear from Penemue. He would either help or he wouldn't, but he wouldn't offer harm.

Getting out of the car, she shivered, and reached back into the rental for her jacket. Despite the heat of the sun and the reflection from the sand and gravel and stone, the altitude kept the air cool. The monastery was held in a cup between the ridges running down from the mountains that surrounded it, over five thousand feet above sea level and even in the depths of summer, it wasn't too hot.

Snagging the bulky leather pack from the seat, she locked the car, turning and walking along the wall that divided the village from the gardens. As she climbed the wide steps that led into the walled monastery, she avoided the tourists who flocked to the monastery at all times of year, weaving her way through the partially open courtyards and taking the chapel path to reach the library.

The air cooled further in the high-ceilinged, stone building and she slowed down, wondering where to start looking. Not here, she thought, where there were so many people. Resettling her pack over her shoulder, she started to walk through the building.

* * *

She found him an hour later, bent over a computer screen in the sub-floor office. On the large monitor, several open windows showed the progress of a document scan, the soft hum of a machine on the next table the only noise in the room.

"Eleanor."

He didn't look around when she walked into the room, and she stood next to the open doorway, waiting for him to finish. He brought a different window to the foreground and studied the screen for a moment.

"Modern technology," he said, straightening and turning to face her. "We've been digitalising the library's contents for the last two years."

The darkly tanned skin was no more lined than it had been the first time she'd met him, almost five years ago. His eyes burned fiercely against the tan, and no smile curved his lips.

"Sit." He gestured to the window, flanked by two woven armchairs and a small, octagonal table.

She walked to a chair and sat down, dropping her bag at her feet. He took the chair opposite, one dark, winged brow cocked.

"You're here about Hell?"

She shook her head. "Only indirectly. I'm here about Lucifer."

Penemue leaned back in the chair, his breath hissing in. "The Morning Star is in the Cage. "

"That might not be the case." She watched his face turn pale under the tan. "He – we think – I think – he got out when his vessel's soul was retrieved."

"That's impossible," the Watcher said. "There were no signs of his release, no –"

"Does destiny rewind when the same thing happens twice?" she asked abruptly. "Or does it take a new path?"

He scowled at the stone-flagged floor. "What do you know?"

She leaned forward. "Not much. Sam Winchester was lifted from the Cage, by a demon and a seraph, without his soul. It's possible Lucifer was hiding, in his vessel, when that happened."

"He wouldn't hide for long," Penemue said.

Ellie shrugged. "The Pale Rider went into the Cage almost a year later, retrieving Sam's soul and returning it to him."

The Watcher's eyes narrowed. "You believe Lucifer was powerless until the soul was returned?"

"The Horseman put a wall around Sam's memories, to keep him sane," she told him. "The seraph broke the wall and Sam started having hallucinations. Of Lucifer. Being back in the Cage."

"Death would've felt the angel when he returned the soul," Penemue said. "He would've known."

"I thought so too, but Sam was Lucifer's true vessel and he could've hidden, within Sam's existing memories. Particularly if he was weak."

"So he lives, in the body of his vessel?"

"Ah, well, no." She dropped her gaze. "Sam was unable to sleep or rest, and his brother called on the seraph to help him."

"The seraph was Castiel?"

She nodded. "Cas took Lucifer into himself."

Maybe, she hedged internally, although no other explanation fitted the circumstances Dean had talked about.

Penemue got to his feet, walking restlessly to the computer table, tension visible in the line of his shoulders, the stiffness of his gait. "Why are you here?"

She turned her head to look at him. "Cas can't control him. He can't force Lucifer out, can barely keep him from taking over. You can."

The Watcher shook his head. "Transfer him? Where? Into what?"

"Into a demon."

He swung around to her, his mouth curling down in disparagement. "You believe that is a good solution?"

She smiled. "A demon held in a circle of holy fire."

She watched him absorb the idea, his expression thoughtful. "So the demon walks out, and Lucifer either remains or is killed."

"That's the idea."

"It might work." He crossed the room slowly, sinking down into the chair again. "Yes. It should work. If the vessel walks, and he chooses to stay in the circle, he can be sent back to the Cage. If he remains with the vessel, he will burn."

"Will you come with me? Castiel is in America, in Indiana."

"What you're asking, it's not an easy thing." He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "We would have to get something first, to help me contain him."

There must have some reluctance in her expression, she realised, when he added, "I can't do the transfer without it. I'm not strong enough to withstand Lucifer without it."

She felt her heart sinking at the prospect of an additional journey, additional time. "Can you get it alone, meet me back in the States?"

"No. I can't get it without you at all." He got to his feet, his expression shadowed. "What I need is in St Parisius, in Father Monserrat's vault."

The Benedictine monastery was high in the mountains of northern Afghanistan, close to the borders of China and Tajikistan. She'd been there for two months in 2007; looking for a way to kill Lilith, to save Dean.

"There is an item, in the catacombs beneath the monastery. I need it." Penemue looked away, rubbing the bridge of his nose lightly. "He trusts you. He'll let you borrow it."

"Pen, you're an angel. He'll trust you too," she argued weakly. Her estimate of a few days was going to turn into weeks. She could imagine all too clearly Dean's reaction to that.

"No. Not now." He turned away. "The Others have not been idle since the Apocalypse was averted, Ellie. Father Monserrat doesn't trust the Watchers any longer. He has had good reason not to."

Ellie stared at his back, frustration filling her. "We've got a three-hour drive back to Sharm el-Sheikh, Penemue. I expect you to fill me on this stuff on the way."

He nodded. "You drove here?"

"Yeah." She stood, slinging her pack back over a shoulder and thinking of times and of distance, of situations and which army was where. "We have to get going; I'm gonna have to pull in a lot of favours to make this happen quickly."

From the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula, it would be a four-hour flight to Kabul. If they were lucky, someone would be doing manoeuvres around Qal-eh Wust, close enough to drop them there. It would save another few hours driving through highly questionable territory.

For a moment, they looked at each other, a tacit apology and an acknowledgement of sorts passing silently between them.

The fallen angel was still angry with her, she knew, still felt the sting of what he saw as her betrayal of their friendship, but until they'd destroyed Lucifer, or sent him back to the Cage, he would put aside his feelings and work with her, to the utmost of his ability.

Turning for the office door, she walked quickly for the library, hearing his steps behind her.

* * *

 _ **Midday. Hyatt-Regency, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt**_

Ellie looked around the plush suite and sighed. A huge living area, with a bar and kitchen, several seating areas taking in the incredible view across the Red Sea and two bedrooms, both with ensuite baths, it was extravagant for what would be, at most, an eight-hour stay, but it had the facilities she needed.

Dropping the three bags of clothes she'd bought in the hotel's arcade onto the floor, she gestured to the Watcher to precede her, tipped the bellboy and closed the suite door behind him. The new clothing were a change for her and a selection of Westernised clothing for the fallen angel, less conspicuous than the _tob_ and robes, she hoped.

"The blue bag and the gold one are for you," she told him. "You can shower and change in there."

She waved a hand toward the suite's second bedroom, crossing the large room to the arrangement of sofas and low tables by the enormous windows. Setting her pack on the low table in front of the largest sofa, she pulled out her laptop and logged into the lepidopteron forum, a small crease appearing between her brows when she saw the message from Dean blinking at her.

 _Looks like all bets are off_ , he'd written. _Watch your back. Demons spreading out from Billings here. Get the first plane you can_.

She groaned softly under her breath. Getting the first plane was a priority, but it wouldn't be to Chicago.

Chewing on the corner of her lip, she thought about how to word a message that would be both informative yet reassuring about the delay in her travel plans. Nothing too detailed, she decided after a moment. She was hoping that he wouldn't know where either Kabul or Qal-eh Wust were, and wouldn't be too worried about it.

The news about the demon activity in the US was a different matter. There was only one reason she could think of for Hell to have allowed so many out. They were looking for the devil. If they'd started in Montana, someone had told them to find the Winchesters. She wondered if Crowley had left notes about the brothers … or anything else … in Hell.

She'd better do something about that, she thought, rubbing tiredly at her temple with the inside of her wrist and glancing at her pack.

* * *

Five minutes later, she headed for the suite's master bedroom. Grimy and dust-laden from the hours in the car, she needed a shower, a change of clothing and something to eat before she started the long process of calling around to see who was available to help with transport from Egypt to Afghanistan.

The ensuite was as luxurious as the rest of the suite, and she stripped off her jeans, shirt and underwear quickly, undoing the long braid and stepping under the gush of the wide showerhead. The soap lathered richly in her palm and she washed absently, her thoughts circling the two main problems they would be facing to reach St Parisius quickly.

Afghanistan was not an easy country to move around in now. She thought Tatiana would probably lend them her jet, which would get them to Kabul. From there it was another two hundred miles north and west, through the mountains. Driving was not an option. Although ISAF and the Northern Alliance had held the area for a few years now, even a single small guerrilla unit could capture or kill travellers with little interference.

Rinsing the conditioner from her hair, she wondered exactly where the British troops were located. She turned off the shower and stepped out, drawing the hotel's thick, soft robe around her.

The first year she'd spent hunting with Michael, he'd taken her to England, introducing her to his friends there. James Cross had been Captain then, and they'd spent three months with his unit, Michael telling her she'd learn more about different weaponry and tactical thinking from training with a military team than she could any other way for twice the time. He'd been right, she thought, picking up the blow dryer and switching it on.

The last she'd heard, he was in the area. That might've changed, but he'd know who could help her, at the very least.

Walking back out to the bedroom, she dropped the robe on the bed and pulled out the lightweight khaki pants, white cotton shirt and underwear she'd bought at exorbitant prices downstairs, dressing quickly. The hotel had a fast laundry service and she picked up the hotel phone to get her clothing picked up. It would be returned in a couple of hours.

When she returned to the main living area, she saw Penemue, standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows. He'd changed from the flowing white robe into jeans, boots, a crisp, white button-through shirt and soft, suede coat and she was a little surprised to see how well they suited him; his black hair long over broad shoulders accentuated by the coat, the warm tan of his skin a strong contrast to the white shirt and the clear, bright blue of his eyes. He looked like a rock star, hiding out from his fans, she thought, mouth tucking in at the corners as she tried to hide her smile.

He turned as she walked across the room, his expression irritable. "These are uncomfortable."

"You'll get used to them," she told him, picking up the room service menu from the kitchen counter. "What do you want to eat?"

"I thought we were in a rush?" He took the menu from her, flipping it open impatiently.

"We are," Ellie said. "But it's not going to be that easy."

He glanced back at her, one brow cocked. "When is it ever?"

* * *

The food arrived forty minutes later, and Ellie spent the next two hours on the phone, calling in favours and organising the details.

Tatiana had been her first call, the Russian widow fortunately at home and amenable to loaning her Gulfstream without questions. It would be at the airport in three hours, another bit of luck that it had been serviced at Tangiers and she hadn't organised its return. The pilot would handle the flight details and would wait for them at Kabul and bring them back to the US when they were ready.

Contacting James had been more of a challenge, necessitating several calls to the UK to talk to someone who could give her his location, but her luck was holding. He was in Afghanistan, midway through a tour. Another four calls got her connected to the base and they put her on hold.

Doodling idly on the notepad in front of her, her subconscious drawing pictures of angels in fiery battle, she wondered if Dean had got her message. The thought of him had brought oddly ambivalent feelings all day long. She missed him, and a part of her was longing to be done with this trip, longing to see him again. Another part, however, was revelling in her autonomy here, in the ability to make decisions, take action without the need for consultation or negotiation. It was unsettling, that contradiction. It felt vaguely traitorous.

"Miss Morgan? We've located Major Cross. Patching you through now," the operator's clear English voice broke through the discomforting thoughts.

"Thank you."

The line crackled loudly in her ear and she pulled the handset away a little. "James? It's Ellie Morgan."

" _Ellie? My god, how are you?"_ She listened to the man on the other end of the line, trying to separate his words from the persistent crackle.

"Good. Well, busy," she said, pressing the phone back against her ear as she tried not to hear the echo that bounced her words back at her. "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch."

" _Don't be ridiculous, sweetheart,"_ he said. _"I heard what happened. Some of it, at any rate. It's been – what? – two years now? Don't tell me you're in London and at a loose end?"_

"No, actually, uh," she hesitated. "I need a favour. Are your boys still in the north?"

She let out the breath she'd been holding when he told her they were.

" _What do you need?"_

"A ride, if you can swing it," she said, chewing on the end of her pen.

" _To where?"_

"Qal-eh Wust, the monastery there, St Parisius'," she told him. "Any chance you're in the area?"

" _As a matter of fact, we are,"_ he said. _"Not a lot of action. Some weather reporting and keeping an eye on the local rabble raisers. Do you have a job there?"_

"No, nothing like that. Just a visit to an old friend."

" _I won't be in Kabul for another couple of days,"_ he said, regret tinging his voice. _"I don't suppose you have the time to hang around and wait?"_

"Not this time, I'm afraid." Thinking about the next few months, she wondered if free time was going to be an option in the foreseeable future. "But, uh, if you let me know when you're home, I'll make a trip out."

" _I'll hold you to that,"_ he said, his voice breaking up again. _"Alright, give me an hour to talk to Bob. He should be able to pick you up in Kabul – at the northern end of the markets."_

"Got it." She let out her breath. "Thanks, James, I really owe you one."

" _You do,"_ he said, a chuckle coming through as the line miraculously cleared for a second. _"I'll look forward to due return. Ellie? Be careful out there, alright? There's been a lot of unrest in the mountains, the last day or so."_

"I'll be very careful," she said. The line closed and she set the handset back on the cradle, looking over her notes.

Well, they had a ride in and out. The whole thing shouldn't take more than about twenty hours.

"We have a way to the monastery now?" the Watcher asked and she glanced up, nodding.

"Yeah. We'll be leaving here in an hour for the airport."

The knock on the door was soft and unexpected.

"Yes?" Ellie called out, getting to her feet.

"Uh, I'm here to collect your cart?"

Glancing at the room service cart, Ellie walked to the door. She needed to call the airport, she thought, check the jet had made it in. The timing would be tight all the way around –

She turned the knob and the door slammed into her, the edge striking her forehead and knocking her backward into the room.

* * *

 _ **July 1, 2012. Bowman, South Dakota**_

The insistent ringing of the phone prised Dean from sleep. He stuck his arm out of the bed, feeling around on the floor in the heap of clothes he'd left there last night – this morning – until he found his coat.

 _"Dean? You all right?"_ Sam's voice sounded slightly tinny on the phone.

"Yeah, man, you woke me up." He lifted his watch close to his face, squinting at the time. "It's only seven-thirty!"

 _"Sorry."_ His brother didn't sound all that sorry. _"We're going to Indiana through Wyoming and Kansas. I just wanted to let you know."_

That really could've waited a few more hours, Dean thought, rolling his eyes. He struggled onto his elbow. "Right. Thanks for sharing."

 _"There're demon signs all over the place now. Right through Montana, heading into North Dakota. It's not a joke,"_ Sam warned.

"Yeah, alright." He sat up and wiped a hand over his face, his gaze travelling around the cheap room without focus.

 _"Have you heard from Ellie?"_

"No. She said she'd leave a message on the forum if she had news." He yawned, wondering if he could get back to sleep again. He'd caught four hours, he could use eight.

 _"Hang on."_

On the other end of the line, he heard the engine noise slow, dropping to an idle after a moment or so. Rustles and a bang. The hell was his little brother doing? There was a distant beep, the all-too familiar sound of Sam's laptop starting up.

 _"Uh … yeah, there's a message here."_ Sam's voice sounded edgy.

Dean waited a moment, brows drawing together when Sam didn't seem inclined to give any more details.

"Okay. What's it say?"

Leaning back against the pillow, he fought off another jaw-stretching yawn, vaguely wondering what the fuck was wrong with his brother as the line stayed empty, hissing faintly with static. Was Sam trying to make him feel worse?

"Sam!"

 _"Uh … she's flying to Kabul,"_ Sam said hurriedly.

"Kabul," he repeated, rolling the sound around his mouth. "An' that would be in –?"

It didn't sound Egyptian. Not that he knew much about Egypt, or anywhere else in the region.

 _"It's, uh, it's in Afghanistan."_

"What?"

Afghanistan? The fucked up country somewhere on the other side of the world the US had been sending troops into for the last how many years? _That_ Afghanistan?

 _"It's the, um, capital of Afghanistan."_

"Why, Sam?" Dean demanded, rolling to the side of the bed, his feet thumping on the floor. " _Why_ is she going to Afghanistan?"

 _"Oh. Well, she says Penemue needs something from a place in northern Afghanistan."_

"Sam? Read the whole freaking message."

 _"Uh, yeah … Slight change in plans. Penemue needs an object from Qal-eh Wust, northern Afghanistan, for the transfer. Have arranged transport in and out via Kabul. Should only be a day or two at most delay to getting back."_

Dean heard the apology in her words but it didn't help. Of course she was going to a country that was at war. _Naturally_. And, as usual, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

"Alright. Thanks."

 _"She'll be alright, Dean."_

"Yeah." He shifted restlessly, acknowledging that any chance of more sleep had gone. "I'll see you later, Sam. Uh, call if there's another message, okay?"

 _"Yeah, of course."_

Dean put the phone back in his coat pocket and sat on the side of the bed for a moment longer. Afghanistan. Whatever it was the ex-angel wanted couldn't've been in Detroit, could it? No. It had to be in Afghanistan. It was like this hinky rule. Take something dangerous, multiply by a factor of ten and add a bit more, just for fun.

He got to his feet and stalked across the room to the bathroom. It was Ellie, he reminded himself. Crap like this happened all the time. She always came out alive.

None of it reassured him. He flushed the toilet and reached into the small shower cubicle, turning on the water.

He would keep going, get to Rochester, wait there. It was the only thing he could do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

 _ **June 29, 2012. Hyatt-Regency, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt**_

Rolling onto her knees, Ellie looked up at the man standing at the open door. Egyptian, she thought, black hair and a neatly trimmed beard framing a lean, narrow face.

 _Possessed._

His eyes were black, corner to corner with no white showing. Sweat crawled down his face, the hotel uniform soaked in it. In his hand, a long, curved dagger gleamed under the downlight in the foyer.

"Where is our Lord!?" he demanded, striding into the room toward her. "Where hides the Lightbringer?!"

He stopped abruptly when he'd cleared the doorframe, his mouth dropping open then twisting up into a snarl.

Getting to her feet, Ellie winced as she wiped her hand across the trickle of liquid she could feel at her temple. The cut smarted.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"You're lit up like the sun."

"Not to something like you," Penemue contradicted, walking across the room to stand beside Ellie. "Your master, perhaps."

He glanced down at the woman next to him. "You don't seem surprised."

"No. We ran into a few before I left the States." Ellie made a face. "And Dean sent a message. Demon signs spreading across the US. Looking for Lucifer, I thought."

"You thought correctly, it would seem," the Watcher said. He looked down at the rug on the floor, lifting a corner with the toe of his boot. A rusty-brown curve showed against the white tiled floor. "And prepared."

"Can't be too prepared," she said lightly, looking at the man inside the circle. "We don't really have time for this."

"No," Penemue agreed. He stepped forward and reached out, his hand gripping the possessed man's skull. "We don't."

Ellie saw his eyes brighten, in colour and intensity, as they stared into the black eyes of the man he held.

"Tell us everything," Penemue suggested softly to the demon.

Under the angel's hand, silvery light pulsed and the man's face contorted in pain, lips drawing back from his teeth, his eyes opening wide, the tendons in his neck contracting and hardening like wire.

"The Princes have returned," it gasped, it's voice rising as hands and feet began to twitch involuntarily. "Lucifer is free – hidden! Must! Find! Our! Lord! Nothing! Else! Matters!"

"Why were you sent after this woman?"

"She knows!" Its hands rose to clutch and flutter at the Watcher's arm. "They smelled her, out in the world! Two men! One woman! The prophecy, oh my Lord, my Lord, Lucifer, Lucifer- _LuciferLuciferluciferluciferlucifer_! Reborn! _REBORN!_ "

The last word was a shriek, and they both smelled it at the same time, Penemue snatching his hand back from the demon as acrid steam and a bubbling ichor spilled from its mouth, through its nose and eyes and ears, the flesh superheated from the inside.

"What the –" Ellie took a step back as the body of the man ran and melted, the skeleton collapsing, flesh and blood blistering and charring and crumbling into ash in the circle.

The Watcher looked dispassionately down at the pile of grey and black debris in the centre of the woven silk rug. "This was more than possession."

Glancing at her watch, Ellie nodded agreement. "Seems like a good time to leave."

* * *

 _ **July 1, 2012. I-94E, Illinois**_

Dean eased the pickup into the flow of traffic bypassing the city, his stomach rumbling. The long hours on the road hadn't helped with the lack of sleep, or the anxiety that hummed at the back of his mind.

Sam'd called from a diner in Wyoming, his brother continuing to check the news and satellite data as he'd moved south and east. New hotspots, like those they'd seen when Crowley'd been searching for them – or Lucifer – or whatever the ex-king had been looking for, popping up in the southern states now. If the demons under Crowley were talking, it wouldn't take them long to remember Rochester'd been a place of interest, he thought.

For the past six hours, he'd felt the prickle at the back of neck, his Spidey-sense of something going wrong somewhere. It was faint, and it'd stayed that way. Could've been a subconscious reaction to the information Sam'd given him, he considered, changing lanes to get around a rig and sliding the pickup back into the middle lane automatically. Or it could've been something else.

When he'd crossed into Illinois and stopped for gas, he'd called Twist. The older hunter'd agreed to get hold of Dwight and Trent and meet him at Rochester. Had a heads-up from Ray the previous day, he'd said. Just a general alert. Demon watch.

Moving into the left lane as he caught a glimpse of a sign for a rest stop ahead, Dean wondered if Ray was getting much information on what was happening globally, as well as in the US. He took the off ramp and coasted down the incline to the big concrete lot, pulling into a parking slot in front of the restaurant. Going in, he ordered a burger and fries, a couple of takeout coffees, paying for them absently. His order arrived and he picked up the bag and tray, carrying them back to the truck.

Setting one coffee into the pickup's cupholder, he finished the food and washed it down with the second coffee, wadding up the trash and pitching it through the window and into the trash can to one side.

The geeky programmer would have to be able to see the rest of the world, he decided, pulling out his phone, and looking up the number Ellie'd given him. Ellie was out of the country often enough.

The phone rang out and he frowned down at the screen, double-checking the number and redialling. He heard a number of clicks on the line before it started to ring again, then it was picked up.

" _Yeah?"_

The line was crystal-clear and Dean swallowed at the small of rill of relief that loosened his fingers around the cell.

"Uh, yeah, Ray?"

" _Who's this?"_ He could hear the suspicion in the man's voice clearly. He'd thought Frank was a paranoid sonofabitch, but Ray had him beat easily.

"It's Dean," he said. "Winchester."

" _Who?"_

"Uh," he hesitated, wondering if it was possible the guy was on something. He'd looked like the straightest of straight arrows. "Dean Winchester? We met – uh – at Whitefish, not long ago? Ellie's –"

" _Oh, right. Dean. Yeah, right,"_ Ray said, his tone morphing from brittle suspicion to expansive cheer instantly. _"Sorry, man, it's been crazy here the last couple of days. Sure. Dean. Yeah."_

"Right," Dean said, raising a brow at the phone in his hand. "Uh, I was wonderin' –"

" _The demon signs, am I right? They're all over."_

"Uh, yeah, got that," he said. "What I was wonderin' was if you can see what's going on, uh, outside the country?"

" _Globally? Sure."_ Ray's voice faded for a moment, then came back strongly. _"Did you want to know about anywhere in particular?"_

"Uh, Egypt."

" _Wow, mind-reader,"_ Ray muttered, muted beeps audible on the line under his voice. _"Yeah, I got a cluster-blip a few hours ago, Sharm el-Sheikh. I was going to call Ellie about it – she, uh, said she was gonna be in that region? – but it disappeared."_

"Disappeared?" Dean's stomach lurched, the burger and fries gaining inexplicable weight.

" _Well, yeah,"_ Ray said. _"I, uh, thought the demons had, you know, smoked out or something."_

 _Or something_ , Dean thought, scowling at the dash. "What about – uh – Afghanistan?"

" _Nope, nothing there."_ He heard a sharp exhale on the end of the line. _"In fact, there's nothing but background clutter right through Eurasia right now. That's weird."_

"Weird, how?"

" _Uh, well, usually, there's quite a bit of activity in Asia and the Middle East – anywhere there's, uh, fighting, or trouble, but right now? Nada."_

"You think they're all over here?" He grimaced at the parking lot, not wanting to get a confirmation on that prospect.

" _Um. I don't know. It's looking like it,"_ Ray said. _"They like Memphis, for some reason. Signs around there've been growing like crazy."_

Sam'd said the same thing, he thought. "What about Rochester? Indiana?"

" _Not as much there,"_ Ray said. _"There's another mass in Pittsburgh."_

"Uh, okay, thanks."

" _Sure, anytime."_

The line closed abruptly and Dean looked at the cell, hitting the End button.

A cluster-blip, Ray'd said, whatever the hell that was. That'd disappeared.

Maybe that'd been the reason for the low-grade prickle he'd been feeling, although it hadn't exactly gone away, he thought, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck as he stared down at the phone. His thumb circled the speed dial for Ellie. They'd agreed not to use the phones. It made things too easy for the levis. But this … this was different, damnit.

The cell shrilled in his hand, making him jump, his thumb hitting the call button hard enough to ache. "What!?"

" _S'me,"_ Sam's voice crackled in his ear. _"Something wrong?"_

"No," Dean said, dragging in a breath and shunting his tension aside. "What's going on?"

" _Had to get further south,"_ his brother said. _"Probably take me another six hours."_

"Okay." He glanced at his watch. It would put Sam's arrival roughly at the same time as Twist and Dwight, he thought. "Listen, uh, I called Twist and, um, Dwight. We're gonna need help with this."

" _Sure."_ There was a pause on the other end, the line filled with a low hum. _"You, um, heard anything from Ellie?"_

"No."

He'd checked the forum twenty times in the last few hours. There'd been nothing on it. He'd told himself that a country like that would probably be hard to move around in, hard to find a communication network, but it'd all sounded like lame excuses and his subconscious was clocking overtime on all the possible things that could've happened. Could be happening right now.

" _Dean? You alright?"_

No. He wasn't. "Yeah, m'fine."

There wasn't anything his brother could do or say that would help. He heard Sam's deep exhale on the other end of the line.

"Just tired, man," he added. "Feels like I've been driving non-stop for three days."

" _Uh huh."_

"Be careful, alright?"

" _Yeah, you too."_ The line cut out and he tossed the phone onto the seat beside him, his fingers reaching for the ignition key and starting the pickup.

Another couple of hours and he'd be at the hospital. Or nearby, anyway, he amended. The food was still sitting heavily in his stomach, and he looked at the coffee with distaste. He wanted a beer.

* * *

 _ **June 29, 2012. Gulfstream G280, fifteen minutes out of Sharm el-Sheikh**_

"How long will this take?" Penemue moved restively against the cream leather upholstery, his gaze on the window.

"About four hours," Ellie said, her eyes on the laptop's screen. "Give or take conditions."

"You were not surprised by the demon's appearance." The angel's tone was flat. "Nor by his lack of power."

She glanced at him. "No, I told you, we ran into a few lower level demons at home, a few days ago."

"What did you make of what he said?"

"I don't know," she said, gesturing at the laptop. "The only prophecy I knew of relating to the Winchesters was the one about the Seals and the Righteous Man."

"I too have not heard of any other," Penemue agreed.

"What happened between you and Father Monserrat?"

He sighed, leaning against the cabin's side. "Nothing personal," he said. "He contacted me, not long after Michael denied our request. He asked for my help – our help – at the monastery."

"With what?"

"It was, as you know, a period of great unrest," he said. "Not just Lucifer's meddling and the Horsemen, but throughout Heaven and across the earthly plane. The Others also took advantage of the troubled nature of the times, stirring up the populace, aiding the humans in their activities of terror. They were looking for things."

"Things?" Ellie tilted her head as she looked at him. "You mean artefacts? For rituals? Spells? Knowledge?"

"All of those," Penemue agreed tiredly. "They attacked the monastery and killed many."

"Father Monserrat would've understood –"

He smiled at her. "I doubt if the good monks of St Parisius could differentiate between one fallen angel and another, particularly when their blood was being let." He looked back at the window. "It wasn't the only place that was targeted. Many of the old libraries and keeps were looted and burned. Patrick told me what had been happening."

"Do you know what they're looking for?"

His brows pinched together and he waved a hand vaguely. "Omens, sigils, spells and black magic. They believe they can go home."

"To Heaven?" Ellie asked, surprised.

"They have convinced themselves of Raphael's lies," the Watcher said. "That God has forsaken all and Heaven is for the taking."

God, as Penemue well knew, was very much around, if keeping a low profile, Ellie thought. It was hard to believe his sons, even those that'd fallen in rebellion, didn't know it.

"Would they try to make an alliance?" she asked him. "With the archdemons? To put Lucifer back into power?"

His gaze returned to her, the startling blue eyes shadowed. "Yes, I believe they will try."

"Will it work?"

He shrugged. "I doubt it. The Fallen will not be looking to reinstate Lucifer in his full power."

"They won't?" Ellie asked. "Why not?"

"He had them for millennia, Eleanor," Penemue said. "Used them for sport, to assuage his frustration, his anger and boredom. There is nothing left of the celestial songs they once were, and their hatred for him is deeper than you could possibly imagine."

"Then why look for him?"

"Oh, they want him back," the Watcher said, a thread of amusement in his voice. "I have no doubt they already have a means and a plan to keep him under control, to use his power and the power of Hell's Throne." He shook his head. "But the Others? They were the angels who gave fealty to Lucifer and then ran to save their own lives when Michael seemed to be winning. The Fallen call them the Tainted Ones, did you know that?"

She shook her head.

"If they cannot find Lucifer themselves, they will lie and convince the Others that all is forgiven and they will throw them into the abyss when they have what they want."

"Doesn't sound like a bad idea," she ventured. "Let them destroy each other?"

His answering smile was flat. "It would be a simple solution, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, I somehow doubt they'd leave much of the earthly plane intact by the time they'd finished."

That wasn't in the game plan, Ellie thought. She wondered sourly if Hell's plans would disrupt the Leviathan.

"Why did Lucifer interfere with the Leviathan?"

"The same reason he's done everything," Penemue said, his tone impatient. "He thought he could use them to wipe out humanity."

* * *

 _ **June 30, 2012. Kabul, Afghanistan**_

Penemue followed Ellie through the press of the crowds, uncomfortable and jostled by the surging mob, irritated by the unfamiliar and constraining clothing he wore, assailed by the shouts and cries of sellers and buyers, the cacophony of scents and the rising heat, the late afternoon sun beating down into the enclosed and airless narrow street.

He drew in a deep breath as she turned down a narrow laneway, relief filling him when the crowd thinned dramatically and the shadows of the stone and mudbrick buildings cut the heat. The lane wound through an old neighbourhood on the steeply rising ground and as they climbed, he could see over the roofs of the buildings, the glittering snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush casting their long shadow down over half the city.

"Here." Ellie stopped at the mouth of the lane, drawing back against the wall, her clothing, hair and face hidden beneath a plain black burqa and chadri. He stood beside her, keeping a chaste distance.

"What now?"

"We'll get picked up, taken to the base." She glanced back down the lane. "They'll give us a ride to Qal-eh Wust."

The distinctive chug-chug of a diesel vehicle bounced and echoed from the high walls and Ellie turned toward it, pulling back the sleeve of her robe to check the time.

The Landrover that drew up next to the mouth of the lane was a military vehicle, the driver's camouflage uniform showing a discreet RAAF patch on one sleeve. Ellie opened the door, using it to hide her as she slipped out of the covering robes and headdress. She wadded up the clothing and shoving it into her bag as she climbed into the LPPV quickly. Penemue got in beside her.

"Nice to see you again, Miss Morgan." The sergeant driving flicked a glance at her, his accent broad Australian.

"Good to see you too, Bob. How's Margaret?" Ellie leaned back and stretched a little, feeling relieved that so far, at least, they were running to the schedule. "Keeping up with little Peter?"

"She's got two to keep up with now. We had a little girl last year, Rebecca." Bob's expression didn't change, but his voice was filled with pride. "Reckons she shouldn't'a married a soldier, no help with them."

"Congratulations!" Ellie grinned at him. She'd spent two weeks with them in Melbourne, after Michael had been killed, taking advantage of Bob's furlough to test a new range of weaponry. His wife, Margaret, had welcomed the help with their infant son in a different country. "Are you back in the UK now?"

He nodded. "Set up house in Wiltshire. It's handy."

"Well, you tell her from me, soldiers make the best dads, even if they can't be there all the time."

He smiled, keeping his eyes on the road. "Major's got a plane waiting for you at the airfield. It'll take you to Fayzabad. Kabul is too far, stretches the Chinook's limits. It's down for an aerial survey of the area, just surveillance. So long as you don't take more than an hour, it'll pick you up and bring you back at twenty-hundred jay."

She nodded. "How's the weather?"

"Good at the moment. Thunderstorms in the area, low level warning. No snow forecast until tomorrow."

Ellie recalculated the times. An hour's flight to Fayzabad, half an hour to Qal-eh Wust. The Gulfstream would take them back to the States. She pulled out her phone and sent a text to the jet's pilot, giving their updated details.

* * *

 _ **June 30, 2012. St Parisius' Monastery, Qal-eh Wust, Afghanistan.**_

The sun had dropped below the level of the peaks when the Chinook landed in the dry meadow, sending dust flying in every direction.

"You got an hour," the pilot told her through the headsets they wore, twisting around and leaning out of his seat, one finger tapping his watch to make sure she understood. "You're not here, we have to go without you, understand?"

Nodding, she pulled off the headset and climbed down the ladder, her backpack bumping against her. She hit the ground and turned to the look at the long and twisting path and stairs that led up to the monastery. Getting up there would certainly relieve the stiffness of the last six hours of travel, she thought, heading for the crumbling stone gateway at the base.

When they reached the top, it was full dark, and only the monk standing by the thick, timber gates holding a wavering torch showed her where they were. One of the gates stood open a little and she grinned as she recognised the stout man in the black robes, the torch lifted higher and lighting his short grey hair.

"Very clandestine," Father Monserrat said, eyes crinkling up with laughter. "Cryptic emails? Helicopters under cover of darkness –?"

He stopped abruptly, humour vanishing and his eyes narrowing as he saw the man behind her.

"You are not welcome here."

Ellie glanced back at the Watcher. "He's a trusted friend, Father."

"Then you might need to re-examine the criteria of your trust, child," the monk said, his tone acerbic. "The fallen sons of God are not as they seem."

"Some of them, no," Penemue agreed, walking into the circle of light thrown by the flickering torch. "But we are not all evil, Francis."

"Perhaps not," the monk allowed unwillingly. "Trust is a commodity more and more difficult to come by these days. You will understand, I think, that I do not invite you inside."

Penemue inclined his head. "I understand. I will wait here."

Opening her mouth to argue further, Ellie closed it again. The Watcher had told her what he wanted. They were on the clock and she didn't have time to convince the monk now in any case. She followed Father Monserrat inside the gates.

The courtyard, paved in mismatched stone, was small and the monk pushed the iron and timber doorway to the building open, stepping inside and setting the torch into a bracket on the wall.

"It's good to see the monastery managed to escape most of the fighting, Father," she said, following him down the lit hallway.

"We are too far north, too hard to get to, I think. And we are Benedictine, neither Buddhist nor Islam, minding our own business yet in the international eye. Of course, a couple of times it was touch and go. Just as well the catacombs are vast." He looked over his shoulder at her. "But we have not been out of reach of all our enemies."

"I'm sorry." She stopped as he did, in the great hall that ran the length of the building.

"Four years since I've seen you, and then you bring a Watcher," he chided.

She returned his gaze steadily. "Penemue has kept his vows, Father, and what he needs – it's of great importance now."

"Always with you, it's of great importance. There is too much drama in your life, Ellie," he told her, his reproving tone only half-joking. His expression softened as he studied her. "You look happier, but I see new scars."

She gave him a wry smile. "Scars are the price of doing business, in my line of work, Father, but yes, I guess in all the ways that count, I am happier."

He lifted a brow. "That's it? I'm not going to get a full account?"

"Soon," she promised, mentally adding him to the list of people she needed to actually spend some time with, not just hit up for favours. "But not this time."

She glanced down the hall. "We're on a timetable, I'm afraid."

"Alright," he agreed reluctantly, folding his arms over his chest. "Your email was excruciatingly vague. What is this item you must have?"

"It's a collar, uh, a torc really." She looked hopefully at him. "Made of gold, with a fine design that is engraved right around the length. It might give the appearance of being Egyptian or Roman, but it's a lot older than that. It's two pieces, joined together at the back with a ball joint, allowing it to be opened."

His gaze dropped to the floor as he appeared to consider the description. When he lifted his head, it was to nod at her. "I know the piece. It is in the oldest room in the vault. Come on."

Turning down the hall, he walked briskly, his robe rustling over the stone floor. Ellie followed him to the end, her gaze rising involuntarily to the curving staircase as they passed by. For a month, she'd been up and down those stairs several times a day.

Father Monserrat glanced back at her without slowing. "And he wants it for?"

"Do you really want to know?"

He snorted, the small noise echoing faintly against the stone walls that had narrowed to either side of them. "I think I must, if I'm to let it leave here. It's four thousand years old, according to the British Museum."

Letting out a deep exhale, she said, "He needs it to effect a transfer of an angel's essence - frequency - whatever you want to call it, from an angel to a demon."

The monk stopped dead in front of her, turning and staring at her. "What?"

"You asked," she said, giving him a small shrug as she took his arm and pushed him down the corridor that led to the catacomb entrance. "It's a long story, but we have good reason to believe Lucifer rode out of the Cage in an empty vessel. When the soul was returned to the vessel, he was in there with it and he's been slowly regaining his strength through the vessel's soul."

"Are you talking of Samuel Winchester?" Father Monserrat asked, his brows raised. "He was the vessel of Satan, wasn't he?"

She nodded, unsurprised by his knowledge of those events. The Winchester name had been passed around even while Lucifer had been stirring things up. She'd wondered at the time if it'd been deliberate on the devil's part, or the work of something else. "Like I said, Father, it's a long story. Sam was raised without his soul. He was nearly a year without it, in fact."

"By what? Or whom?"

"An angel and a demon," she said. "They didn't realise – or maybe they did – they'd resurrected his body but not his soul."

"But his soul was lifted also?" The monk's expression was incredulous, and Ellie couldn't blame him.

"Yes, Sam's brother –"

"The Righteous Man," Father Monserrat interrupted, his gaze intensifying on her. "I read the prophecy, Ellie. He was the one you came here to save, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "He convinced the Fourth Horseman to retrieve his brother's soul and return it."

"Convinced Death, did he?" Father Monserrat smiled doubtfully, as if he wasn't quite sure whether to believe her or not. "How did he manage that little feat?"

For a moment, she felt light-headed, seeing it all through the eyes of someone who hadn't lived through it, hadn't felt or seen or heard those things firsthand. She shook her head.

"Well, believe it or not, he has a kind of relationship with Death," she said, with another half-shrug. "At least, that what it seems like."

A mutual respect, she'd thought when Dean had told her about the rings. She wasn't going to dwell on that, or speculate about it with the monk. It was one of the many things they hadn't really gotten around to talking about.

"A relationship with Death," Father Monserrat repeated in bemusement. "Alright. And Lucifer is back on this plane, in the body of his vessel but without his power – have I understood that correctly?"

"Ah, almost," Ellie hedged. "The angel, Castiel, took Lucifer into himself when it seemed as if Lucifer was trying to kill Sam. Lucifer doesn't appear to have much strength in his current state, perhaps that's a permanent thing, perhaps not."

Father Monserrat let out a gusting exhale. "This is – well, it's unbelievable."

Ellie grinned. "And you a man of God, Father, I thought you believed in everything."

He spread his hands apologetically. "Apparently there are things that strain even my pious credulity. So Lucifer is back on this plane – in the body of another angel? How will the torc help with that?"

She nodded. "He has control of the angel, Father. We need to get him out, transfer him to a person. Then it will be possible to contain or kill him with holy oil – _Oleum Sanctum Jerusalem_."

"Does that really work?" the monk asked, a wistful curiosity in his voice. "I've read about it, but I've never been sure if the stories are true or just the wishful thinking of their very human authors."

"Oh, yeah, it works," Ellie said, thinking of Uriel. "It will trap an angel – they cannot pass out of the flames. If they do, they burn."

They'd reached the end of the corridor and the door to the vaults was in front of them.

"Fascinating." Father Monserrat pulled out a ring of keys and opened the heavy wooden door.

Steps led down into the darkness. Under the monastery, and leading back into the mountain's core, miles of catacombs, tunnels and caverns riddled the ancient rock. The first monks had hid in them, with every invasion, every persecution. Father Monserrat took a lantern from the shelf beside the door and lit the oil. The warm yellow flame brightened and cast its light down the stairs.

"It's in the oldest room. Mind your step." He led the way down the roughly hewn stone steps, the light wavering along the walls.

Ellie followed slowly, matching her pace to his, although the seconds were ticking away in her mind, and she was acutely aware that if they were not back in the field in thirty-five minutes, they would be walking back to Kabul. The Chinook's schedule was strict. There was no leeway for hitchhikers at all.

The vaults were down on the fourth level of the catacombs, she recalled. Following Father Monserrat down the winding stairs, their centres hollowed with the passage of feet over centuries, she wondered if she'd ever have the time to come here and document their contents. The twisting tunnels widened occasionally, passing through caves and caverns made by nature and only smoothed by man. Deeper, she could hear an occasional chuckle of water, some subterranean river or stream that had done its work in the higher levels and pulled by gravity, continued to work its way through the soft rock stratum of the mountain.

Glancing at her watch again, she bit her lip as another ten minutes passed and they still hadn't reached the room. He slowed as they approached another slight widening of the tunnel, stopping at a iron-bound door. She waited, trying to curb her impatience as he unlocked it.

The room they entered was one of the natural caves, wide rather than tall. The floor had been smoothed out to an even surface and shelving built along the walls. Boxes, chests, drums and barrels, bags and baskets stood on the shelves and around the floor, piled haphazardly one on the other, giving a surreal impression of Aladdin's cave, full of unknown treasures.

Father Monserrat moved confidently through them, going straight to a small, enamelled chest, tucked among others on a broad shelf. He unlocked it and lifted the shallowly curved lid, holding it out to her. Ellie walked forward, looking in. On a cushion of black velvet, the torc gleamed softly in the lamplight. It was almost circular, tapered toward the small knob that formed the locking mechanism, the entire necklet marked with a very fine design, graven into the soft metal, its pattern sinuous and repetitive, almost hypnotic.

She lifted it out of the box cautiously. It was very heavy and the metal had the silken lustre of pure gold, an almost matt sheen under the oily yellow light of the lantern.

"Do you know why he needs it?" Father Monserrat looked down at it, his voice very quiet.

Ellie fought the urge to whisper back, clearing her throat and trying to speak in a normal tone. "He said he needs it to prevent Lucifer from being able to invade his consciousness, during the transfer."

"Do you believe him?" Father Monserrat's brows rose quizzically.

She looked into the old man's warm, brown eyes and saw his fear. From what the Watcher had told her of the attacks on the monastery, it was understandable.

"Yeah, I do, Father. No matter what the Others have done or are planning, Penemue has never once given me a reason to doubt. He is committed."

He nodded, turning away and replacing the box on the shelf. He picked up the lamp and led the way out, Ellie following slowly, the torc heavy in her hands. She hoped the Watcher's motivations were as he'd said. She couldn't face the thought of betraying the man ahead of her, after all he'd done for her.

* * *

As they reached the main floor of the monastery again, he stopped, turning to her. "Have you heard of the massacres, in the south?"

Opening her backpack, Ellie pulled out several squares of silk, wrapping the torc in them and pushing it to the bottom of her pack. "Only what the news has been reporting."

"That's the whitewashed version, for the masses," the monk said. "The reality is much worse."

"When was this?"

"A few weeks ago."

When Crowley was still King, and looking for an edge over the levis, she thought. "And now?"

"I'm not sure," he said, his expression troubled. "It's been quiet, but the blood that was spilled … it was – I'm almost sure they opened a gate."

"Have you been called on?"

He shook his head. "John was here, around the same time."

She frowned, looking down at her pack. Ray had said something about a hotspot, but that had been weeks ago. She hadn't heard from John or Patrick since getting out of Hell.

"There was a change of rulership in Hell, Father." She settled the pack securely on her shoulder, too conscious she had very little time to fill him in. "Crowley was killed. He was holding the Fallen with a spell. But it's likely they're free now. We'll have to wait and see if they are content to return to the old ways, or if they're going to try and push through here."

Father Monserrat straightened, brows knitting up. "If they align with the nephilim who have turned against humankind …"

"Yeah. Well, let's get Lucifer sorted out first," she said with a tired smile. "We'll worry about the rest when there's no chance he can regain his power. I'll let you know how we go." She leaned forward, kissing him lightly on both cheeks, then turned away, heading for the door.

"Ellie? Travel safe, child. God be with you," he called after her.

Ellie turned as she pulled open the heavy postern door in the building's larger gate. "And with you, Father."

Walking quickly through and pulling it closed behind her, she heard the locks turning and the iron bars sliding across.

Penemue came out of the shadows along the wall. "Did you get it?"

"Yep." She glanced at her watch. "We've got five minutes to get to the field."

* * *

 _ **July 1, 2012. Rochester, Indiana.**_

Dean stretched along the front seat of the pickup, knees bent and boots resting against the passenger door. He was too tall, he thought, as the position became untenable within a few minutes. Exhaling in frustration, he changed position to lean back against the driver's door, stretching his leg out along the seat. It was a little better.

His phone vibrated against his hip, and he opened his eyes, digging with one hand in his coat pocket.

"Yeah?"

 _"Got another message from Ellie,"_ Sam said, sounding as loud and clear as if he'd been sitting in the car.

"What is it?" He gave up on the idea of getting comfortable enough to catch some sleep.

 _"Uh …_ _All okay. Flight GS-280. Chicago ETA 1750. See you soon_."

Leaning back against the door, Dean closed his eyes, his chest unknotting as the tension of the last three days began to unravel.

" _You there?"_

"Yeah," he said. "M'here, just – uh – yeah."

He could hear his brother's curiosity, pulsing at him across the airwaves as the silence on the line stretched out. He'd been worried for the last few days about Ellie but the laughable thing was, the really dangerous part of what they were doing hadn't even started yet. Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he tried to focus on the conversation enough to defuse Sam's silent prodding.

"Where're you?"

"Springfield, Illinois." His brother's indrawn breath was audible, Winchester-speak for _I won't forget this, it'll come up sometime_. "I should be there in about five hours."

Dean looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock in the morning. Sam would be here by two. If he left at two-thirty, he'd easily make Chicago by five-thirty.

"Good. I'm in the woods, on the other side of the river to the hospital. I'll see you around two."

"Yeah."

He closed the phone, replacing it in his pocket.

A Watcher. A demon. A possessed angel. It sounded like the start of a really bad joke. He hoped like hell this was all going to work.

* * *

 _ **5.40 p.m. July 1, 2012. O'Hare International Airport, Chicago.**_

Dean walked down the concourse of Terminal 5, his gaze alternating between the growing crowd of people milling around the gates and his watch. The private lounge was to the left, and he pushed through the doors, relieved to see no one there. He might've been getting old, he considered, walking over dark crimson carpet and past a tasteful seating arrangement of pale grey club sofas and comfortable-looking armchairs to the broad expanse of windows that comprised the outside wall of the room, but too many people in one place made him uncomfortable.

He'd left Sam three hours ago, sitting in the same spot by the river, watching the hospital. They'd called Meg, told her they had a plan to help Cas. The demon'd sounded sceptical but willing. As soon as Ellie and her angel friend arrived, they could get back there and get it over with.

He was, he thought, getting more patient these days, but he had no problem admitting he didn't have the patience for this. The whole world was crazier than it'd been when the devil'd been playing _Let's End It All_ ; the problems he couldn't ignore were mounting up like bad fucking IOUs in a casino.

The airport's intercom squawked and a voice too low and muffled to be heard clearly mumbled something about some flight delay or other. Knuckling his jaw, the prick of stubble he hadn't had the time or inclination to shave when he'd left the last motel, in whatever the hell town that'd been, reminded him it'd been a couple of days since he'd managed a shower or even a few hours of decent sleep.

He slid another glance at his watch. 5.50. The airport was known for its delays, but the hell was the hold up with a private fucking jet? He walked around the spacious room again, pushing his hands into his pockets, wondering what the point of the floor-to-ceiling tinted windows was when you couldn't see the fucking plane you were there to meet. Middle of summer and they had the aircon up high and it was like friggin' Alaska in the private lounge.

"Are you waiting for a private plane, sir?"

He swung around, looking at the slender woman standing behind him. Ash-blonde hair cut into a symmetrical bob to her jawline framed a pretty face enhanced by flawless makeup. The pale grey, form-fitting silk jacket and skirt she wore was brightened by a white blouse with a crimson bow at the base of her neck, the outfit proclaiming her an employee of the company who owned the lounge. A photo ID clipped to one pocket confirmed it.

"Uh, yeah," he said, wondering if she was going to throw him out. In travel-worn and oil-stained jeans, boots, musky shirt and coat, he thought he might've looked out of place in the luxurious lounge. Her expression didn't suggest it. She was looking at him with a polite yet warm regard.

"GS-G280 landed twenty minutes ago, sir," she said, gesturing unhelpfully toward the windows which showed acres of unoccupied concrete and nothing else. "The passengers are being processed through B&C now. It won't be long."

"Right," he said.

"Would you care for a complimentary drink while you wait, sir?"

"Uh –" He looked at her closely, wondering if it was some kind of setup. Comped drinks for waiting for someone? It was tempting. A double would've taken the edge off nicely, but he had a long drive and the transfer of the devil from angel to demon waiting for him and he shook his head regretfully. "Nah – uh, no, thanks. I'm good."

"Well, if you're sure I can't get you anything …?"

He shrugged, his gaze cutting away. "M'fine."

"Then you have a nice day, sir."

He glanced back as she turned and walked away, heading for a glass door with a company logo on it. Under it, he made out the slogan; _"Making Your Travel Experience That Much Better"_.

 _No kiddin'_ , he thought, turning back to the window. He'd heard somewhere most airline hostesses were hired first on their looks and measurements, then on their intelligence. It looked like the whole industry followed that game plan. No argument a pretty woman was likely to be more soothing to an irate customer than a plain one, but then again, how irate could anyone get, flying around in a private plane, waited on hand and foot?

The heavy clunk on the other side of the room intruded and he turned, seeing the door open. Two men walked out, both in navy suits, dragging wheeled travel bags. Pilots, Dean decided, catching sight of their IDs, pinned to the pocket of their coats.

Behind them, another slender, pretty woman, this one brunette, but wearing the same immaculate grey suit as the blonde, locked the door open, giving him a view down the short corridor behind it.

The privileges and perks of enormous wealth disappeared from his thoughts as he caught sight of a flash of red, coming around the bend in the corridor. Taking a step toward the door, he stopped as he saw the man walking behind Ellie, a hand proprietarily on her shoulder.

The Watcher, he decided. Tall and lean, broad-shouldered with long, black hair drawn back and bound at the back of his neck, the guy looked to be in his early forties. Bright blue eyes were vivid against a deep tan, a trim black moustache and goatee further defined the strong jaw. He caught up to her and Ellie turned to look up at her companion, slowing down so that they walked close together as he bent to say something to her. He saw her face lighting up in a brilliant smile at whatever that was.

Didn't look like a fallen angel, he thought. More like a goddamned rock star.

* * *

"Why did I not need a – a passport? – to enter this country?" Penemue asked Ellie as they left the counter and walked toward the airport entrance.

"Do you have one?" she asked, glancing at him curiously.

"No."

That was something, she thought. "I asked a friend of mine to put a temporary visa and supporting documentation on the system for you," she told him.

The Gulfstream's connectivity capabilities were excellent and Ray'd messaged her when they'd been halfway over the Atlantic to let her know the Watcher's credentials had been massaged into the system. He'd already contacted Yure for the details he'd needed to put the appropriate application and rubber-stamping in place for the issue of a new US passport for Penemue. It would be delivered within a couple of weeks.

As they came around the bend in the corridor, the Watcher put his hand on her shoulder and she slowed down. "These boundaries of country and state are easier to manage when one has the power of Heaven with which to move around," he said.

Smiling, she couldn't argue. "I think bureaucracy was invented to keep us humble."

The door at the end was open, the grey and red private lounge visible through it. Hurrying, she saw Dean as she came through the door, her stride faltering when she noticed the lack of expression on his face, his gaze shifting from her to the man beside her.

He was pissed, she thought. It couldn't be helped. There'd been no way of bowing out of the side trip and relatively speaking, it'd all gone fine. They had what they needed. Drawing in a deep breath, she walked over to him.

"Hey."

It could only have been a couple of seconds, but it seemed longer as their eyes met and she caught a fleeting shadow; some doubt, or uncertainty, in his. Dropping her bag, she stepped close, her arms sliding around him, eyes closing as his scent surrounded her. He hesitated a fraction longer, then his arms encircled her. She lifted her head as he bent his, the kiss demanding, bruising her lips, hungry with an emotion she wasn't sure how to categorise.

Pulling back a little, she felt his grip tighten, then release her, whatever it'd been driving him gone as he looked down.

"Afghanistan, Ellie?" His face screwed up with exasperation. "Really?"

"Not by choice," she told him.

Taking another small step back, she turned to look at the Watcher. "Dean, this is Penemue. Pen, this is Dean Winchester."

The two men viewed each other warily, nodding in acknowledgement but neither offering their hands.

"It's interesting to meet the man who broke the Chains of Destiny," the Watcher said, inclining his head.

Dean glanced at Ellie, brows lifting slightly. "Uh, yeah, I had a lot of help with that."

Rolling her eyes, Ellie asked, "Where's the truck? We've been travelling for sixteen hours, could we get going?"

"Lot outside," Dean said, putting his arm around her shoulders and taking her pack from her, the gesture more than a little possessive, she thought, not sure if she should be annoyed or amused by it.

From Kabul to Cairo, she'd been on the phone or sleeping. Refuelling in Cairo then the last leg over Africa and the Atlantic, she'd managed to catch a bit more sleep, but the trip had been tiring and she wanted nothing more than all of this to be over. She needed a shower, food, a bed to sleep in. She wanted time with Dean, enough to reassure both of them that nothing had happened, or changed.

Leaving the Watcher to follow, they walked out of the airport and across the lot, and she didn't think she was going to get any of those things, not for a while, at least.

* * *

 _ **July 1, 2012. I-90S. Indiana.**_

"Demon signs, all over Montana, and spreading out, Sam said. Ray confirmed it yesterday." Dean kept his eyes on the road, but he was aware of her beside him, aware of the fallen angel pressed too closely against her on the other side.

At the back of his mind, there was a vague and irrational anger at the woman sitting next to him. His attempts to logic his way around it, or even suppress it, seemed to be making it worse.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her lift her hand, rubbing her knuckles over her eyes.

"Are they back in Rochester?"

"Doesn't look like it," he said. "There're a few, but more in Memphis, Pittsburgh, Dallas –"

He caught her sideways glance at the angel, and Penemue's nodded response.

"They can't see him, or even feel him, really," the Watcher said, his tone thoughtful.

"So, they're searching the same places Crowley was," she said.

"Yes."

"Who, exactly, are you talking about?" Dean flicked a glance at Ellie.

"The archdemons," she said.

"How much further to Castiel?" Penemue looked over Ellie's head at Dean.

"Just under two hours," Dean replied shortly. "What about the archdemons?"

"You need to tell Dean about the Others," Ellie said to the Watcher. "It's going to have an impact on everything."

Dean shot a wary look past her at the fallen angel. "What others?"

The angel stared through the windshield. "You know about the angels who fell? Who chose to live on earth with humankind?"

"Uh, some."

"Not all were chosen by God. Not all wished to teach humankind. Quite a few of them were … aligned ... with Lucifer's ideas."

"Yeah, that I've heard." Dean glanced down at Ellie. She was leaning back, her eyes half-closed. Her face was a little pinched, the fine white scars, and the scattering of freckles standing out.

"There were twelve, who Fell with their Grace, honoured to be chosen," Penemue said. "The Others, they fell to earth when Lucifer called them to fight. On the battlefield, when it became plain that Michael was winning, they fled. When Michael cast the Morning Star into the abyss, only nine of his army stood with him."

Frowning at the road, Dean nodded. "Yeah, the, uh, archdemons."

"Yes," the Watcher said. "The Others settled to the east, but they slowly returned, their numbers diminished. They were traitors, outcasts to everyone and everything. They were bitter and angry."

Sounded like most of the angels he'd met, Dean thought disparagingly.

"We, the Twelve, were – are – the Watchers; _Irin we-qadishin_ , called by the oldest texts humanity wrote. We were tasked with teaching, guiding, helping humanity to progress to enlightment, to being able to evolve themselves." The Watcher exhaled, the sound laden with frustration. "But, even within the Twelve there was dissidence. Some thought humanity would never progress. Some found mortal life to be too hard, too difficult to bear."

He glanced over Ellie's head to Dean. "Azazel was such a one."

Dean stiffened at the name. Ellie shifted closer, resting her cheek against his shoulder. He glanced down and made an attempt to relax.

"In time, their discontent spread. They left us, joined the Others and forgot their origins."

"They forgot they were angels?" Dean asked.

"They forgot they were the sons of God," Penemue corrected him. "Forgot they'd been created celestial songs of harmony and obedience. They practiced abomination. Begat monsters. They infected the land and the people with wickedness and evil."

The Watcher's voice was deep, not quite as deep as his, but with a smooth timbre and a measured cadence. In his mind's eye, that voice conjured disturbing images, vivid and bright as if he'd seen or heard this before. He shook himself free of them, brows knitting up as he refocussed on the highway, on the feel of Ellie's thigh against his own.

"What happened to them?"

"God sent a Flood," the Watcher said, shrugging. "To wipe them out and the people who'd followed them and to cleanse the land of the residue of their practices." He glanced at Dean. "It was the last time He intervened in this world."

Dean nodded. He'd heard that too.

"Some survived. When you and your brother took Lucifer down, they realised the Morning Star had been their one real hope for the paradise on earth they'd been waiting for."

Dean's mouth twisted. "Lucky for us none of them met up with Raphael."

"Yes, it was," Penemue agreed seriously. "They probably already know Lucifer has been freed of the Cage for the second time. They will be looking for him."

"But you think that the, uh, archdemons are also trying to find him?"

"Oh, yes," the Watcher said. "They will want him back. Their power is considerable, but if the Others attempt to ally with them, they may be undefeatable. I'm not completely sure the Fallen would countenance such an alliance, but I have no doubt the Others will attempt it."

"Why – uh – wouldn't the archdemons want them?"

"The Nine fell with Lucifer. His personal guard, the angels that were most loyal to him. The Others are worse than traitors to them; they are betrayers of the most vile kind." Penemue shook his head. "The Fallen call them the Tainted Ones, and every one has been condemned to _Grosb Cnila_."

"Uh … yeah, okay." He wasn't sure he needed to know what that was.

"Penemue thinks the archdemons won't return Lucifer to power," Ellie said.

"What?"

"Lucifer tortured them, over and over, apparently, before Lilith was condemned to Hell," she elaborated. "They might be looking for some payback, or they might just want to keep him on a leash. Either way, if they make an alliance with the Others, it'll only to be find him. They'll probably renege on any deal."

"So," he said, consideringly. "What we should be doing is bringing all of them together and hoping they'll kill each other and save us the trouble?"

Penemue turned his head and smiled. "There springs the hope of the human soul."

Dean shrugged. "Just a thought."

"What we need to do is get of rid of Lucifer." The Watcher's smile vanished. "Without him, the Fallen will not have a leader."

"You think they'll just sulk in Hell and leave us alone?"

The angel shrugged. "There was never any love lost between the nine angels who followed Lucifer, you know. It was the Morning Star who bonded them, gave them a common cause."

"That cause still exists," Ellie said, her voice quiet. "Humanity still exists."

"True," Penemue admitted. "It is the one thing Lucifer and the Fallen have in common with the Others, the desire for the complete extermination of humankind."

"But not you." Dean slid a sideways glance at the Watcher.

"No," Penemue said, turning to look at him. "My brothers and I hold to our vows, Mr Winchester, as we have for three thousand years. We will always follow the Word of our Father."

He felt the press of Ellie's thigh against his, glancing down at her. She wasn't looking at him, but he could see the faint crease between her brows.

"These, uh, other fallen angels," Dean said. "They're still angels? How do we kill 'em without going toe to toe?"

"They fell without their Grace," Penemue told him. "They are mortal beings, flesh and blood, although still difficult to kill."

"They'll regenerate from any injury," Ellie added. "Unless you cut out their heart."

"So, we can't use anything long range?"

"We can," Ellie said. "But we'll have to follow up."

"So, like the levis?"

"Yeah," she said.

He glanced down at her again, seeing her eyes close, her head tip to rest against his shoulder. He hadn't had the chance to ask her about the blip in Egypt, he realised, shifting his gaze over her head to the angel – man – whatever the Watcher was – sitting next to her.

There were too many factions. Too many variables. It didn't seem all that likely any of them would sit still and wait for a tiny group of hunters to come and put an end to them. They'd be jockeying for power, for position, for the advantage and he had the bad feeling they'd already started, putting them on the back foot. Again.

* * *

 _ **Rochester, Indiana.**_

Sam watched the lightning flickering near the horizon. He'd been watching the storm for the last hour, and it seemed to be getting closer, although slowly. Storms were common enough in the state during the summer months, but this one made him uneasy. It didn't seem to be moving with the prevailing wind, and trying to find it on the weather site's radar, it looked a lot smaller than what he was seeing. It wasn't showing up on the lightning finder either, despite the roiling sheet lightning he was watching and the multiple strikes at the leading edge. Weather anomalies weren't unknown, he told himself, crossing his fingers superstitiously.

He looked at his watch. Eight-fifteen. Barring flight delays, airport delays and traffic delays, Dean would be back in another thirty to forty minutes.

The temperature in the car dropped and his breath fogged. He turned around to the back seat to see Bobby materialising.

"Demons," Bobby said the word that Sam had been trying to avoid. He nodded unhappily.

"How do they know where Cas is? How'd Crowley know, before?"

"Maybe they can feel Lucifer? Some kind of sensitivity to trapped celestial frequencies? Who the hell knows, Sam," Bobby looked across the river, at the dark bulk of the hospital buildings. "Don't really matter. We're not going to be able to lock down that place, ya know, it's too damned big."

"Yeah. I know." Sam thought of the interior, of the wards and stairs and corridors. "We can shut off most of the psych ward. I've got salt in the trunk. The doors to the ward are steel."

"We need help, Sam. Call your friends." Bobby vanished.

"Yeah." Sam picked up his phone and called up his contacts. Dean'd called Twist and Dwight. They'd need more.

* * *

 _ **US-31 Indiana**_

Dean glanced at the clouds moving toward them on his right. Lightning flickered through them, multiple strikes and continuous sheeting deep within the bases. Penemue turned his head to watch them as well.

"We're going to have company."

The Watcher nodded, glancing down at the woman sleeping between them.

"That is inevitable." He stretched his legs in the confines of the passenger well. "You have everything we need for protection?"

"Yeah, we're loaded for bear," Dean said. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Watcher's hand move, brushing a strand of hair from Ellie's forehead. "We haven't been able to find a foolproof way to hide Ellie yet."

"No," Penemue said. "She is alight."

Something in his tone grated on Dean. "That mean you got nothing either?"

"Yes."

Fallen, possessed or active, angels weren't a lot of use, he thought.

"I was quite surprised to hear you'd survived the Apocalypse," the Watcher remarked, apropos of nothing.

Dean flicked a curious glance at him. "Didn't think it was that important."

"It was written the Righteous Man would die when Lucifer was killed or returned to the pit. " He could feel the Watcher's gaze, burning against the side of his face. "She was adamant it wouldn't happen."

Dean stared at the road. "Didn't hear that one."

"Most of God's tests require a sacrifice of some kind."

"Yeah, I guess giving up my brother didn't really count," Dean commented sourly. "Makes faith a tough gig,"

"It does," Penemue agreed. "But humanity and angelkind alike don't value what comes easily to them."

"Well, here I am," Dean said, wondering if the Watcher had a point. "Still kickin'."

There was a moment's silence between them, the pickup's cab filled with the low rumble of the engine and the road noise under the tyres.

"She didn't tell you, did she?"

"Tell me what?" Dean asked, the back of his neck prickling. There were too many things Ellie hadn't told him, too many things he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Things he'd never thought to ask, things she hadn't volunteered. The last conversation they'd had was still jangling in pieces in his head.

"My apologies," Penemue said, turning to look through the windshield. "I have spoken without thinking."

 _Penemue asked me to talk to Michael … he lost his temper and he told me about the Horseman's rings … from inside Hell, he said they could be used to get in … To get Sam out? Or me? If Michael lost?_ … fragments of the conversation jumbled in his mind. He hadn't pressed her. He hadn't wanted to know every detail. The ones she'd given him had been too much. He realised there'd been gaps in that recounting. Things she'd talked around without him seeing it.

"Yeah, you probably did," Dean said. "But you're not gonna leave it there."

The Watcher turned, his gaze dropping to Ellie. "I would not like to violate her trust –"

"What'd she do?" Dean asked, his voice deepening as he shot another glance at the man – angel – on the other side of the cab.

"She talked to God."

Dean scowled, his gaze flicking back to the road. "Yeah, see, I don't know what that means. You mean she prayed? 'Cos I have to tell you, we were all praying at that point."

"No. I don't mean she prayed." The Watcher shook his head. "I mean she died. She went into the Light, in order to talk to God. It was a risk."

 _Where the fuck'd all the air gone?_ He looked down at his hands, gripping the wheel so tightly that the bones stood out white under the skin. She _died_? She fucking well died? He thought of the small vertical scar that lay between her breasts. It was a knife scar and he'd never asked about it.

 _A risk?_ The Watcher's last remark replayed as he tried to stop thinking about the scar and what it lay over. _You fucking think?_

Gone for good. He forced air into his lungs and let it out again. She couldn't have gone to a goddamned doctor, like he did, someone who could have brought her back if … if …

"How d'you know this?" he snapped, cutting off the churning questions and accusations in his mind.

"She asked for my help," Penemue answered simply. "I couldn't drive the knife into her, but I stayed with her, prepared myself to burn her body if she failed. And I thought she would."

 _There was a flash through the room as the light doubled in power and he stared in disbelief as Ellie was held in the centre of that beam, the colour bleached from her hair, her face, as the light strengthened … I was_ there _, Cas – who can survive an archangel's attack?_ You _couldn't … I can't explain it, I don't know how it happened, but she is. I spoke to her twenty minutes ago … Cas, are you God?_ … _That's a nice compliment. But no. Although, I do believe he brought me back. New and improved …_

Memories, thick and painful, rocketed through his mind.

"I was surprised that God even listened," Penemue was saying and Dean blinked savagely at the road, forcing memory and emotion somewhere else. "He hasn't been listening, really, for a long time."

 _He doesn't think it's His problem_ , Joshua'd said. _God is dead_. Raphael had been filled with an expressionless certainty, the dark skin of his vessel burnished by the flames.

"I was more surprised He intervened at that time. Lucifer had been banished. The world had been saved, but perhaps it was your sacrifice that moved Him, as much as hers."

"Cas fixed me," Dean said, his voice flat.

The Watcher nodded. "And God brought him back to do so."

"You're telling me if she hadn't – hadn't – uh – talked to him, me and Cas'd be dead right now? And Sam'd still be flying soulless?"

"Every action has a reaction, Mr Winchester," Penemue said, his gaze dropping to the woman between them. "And consequences flow from those actions as surely as ripples flow from impact."

He leaned back against the passenger door. "It renewed my hope – that she had succeeded like that. That someone could still make Him listen … and act."

"This was, uh, in 2010?"

"Yes, in early spring."

When he'd been prepared to hand himself over to Michael, Dean thought bleakly. _Well, it sure as hell explained why she hadn't been around, didn't it?_ His stomach was twitching, the tension knotting his muscles sending spears of pain up through his shoulders and neck and into his head. He focussed on the road, belatedly recognising the turn off to the bridge just ahead.

 _Just breathe. You can deal with this later. No distractions now. Just breathe_ , he repeated to himself as he turned onto the bridge, the truck bouncing slightly over the seams.

Against his side, Ellie stirred, lifting her head from his shoulder.

"We there?"

He nodded, unwilling to trust his voice.

 _The hell hadn't she told him?_

He thought he'd made it clear he wanted – not wanted, but _needed_ – to know about the big things, the things that would've changed everything else. _Dying sure as fuck fell into that category_ , he thought, his hands strangling the wheel again.

She hadn't wanted to tell him about any of it. Hadn't thought it would help. He knew why. For Ellie, it was in the past. Done. Over with. It'd worked out and that was all that mattered. She didn't do post-mortems, and unless something funny'd happened on a job, she didn't do walks down memory lane. It was one of the things they had in common, but he couldn't keep taking these ambushing surprises about her.

He saw Sam's car, and pulled in alongside it, forcing himself to inhale and exhale steadily, trying to make it sound natural. It wasn't the right time or place to deal with it now.

Turning off the engine, he got out of the pickup without looking at either Ellie or the Watcher. The air in the lot was cool and faintly tinged with moisture and he sucked it down, feeling the bands of tension in his chest and throat gradually ease.

Sam got out of the Jeep and looked at him, his brother's brow furrowing immediately.

"What's wrong?"

Dean shook his head. "Let's get this show on the road."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

 _ **Rochester, Indiana**_

Sam looked at the fat raindrops splatting against his windshield as he pulled into the hospital's visitor's lot. The storm had finally begun moving, and from the way the tops of the trees were bowing and lashing along the lot's edge, it seemed like it was going to move fast.

He reversed the Jeep between the white painted lines of the slot next to Twist's pickup and turned off the engine, catching a part of the conversation between the two men in the truck as he got out of the car.

"I'm just sayin' that we need to be clear on what the hell we're playing before someone wins." Dwight's voice was filled with exasperation.

"Here they are. Save your bellyaching for after," Twist said, opening his door and getting out.

Hiding a grin, Sam nodded to the older hunter, tossing his keys to him. He'd been surprised by the borderline acrimony between the two hunters when he'd met them. Ellie'd told him both men would argue about anything, although poker was the most frequent source of disagreement. The games weren't important; the arguing was a diversion they both enjoyed.

He turned around, watching over the hood of the Jeep as Dean backed the white pickup in beside him. Even from a distance, his brother looked tense, his face cold and expressionless, some imperfectly suppressed emotion radiating from him.

There didn't seem to a reason for Dean's subtle antipathy to the tall man, once an angel, who climbed stiffly from the truck when Dean turned off the engine. Aside, of course, from the way angelkind had screwed them both over multiple times, Sam considered. But, for some reason, Dean never appeared to take those betrayals personally … and whatever was eating at him now definitely looked personal.

Ellie slid out the passenger door after the Watcher, and Sam saw Dean's head turn to watch her. He followed his brother's gaze. She looked tired, but he wasn't getting the impression it was entirely worry about her that was rubbing against his brother either.

As they came around the front of the pickup, Dean got out.

"Dean, you, uh, know Trent –" Twist waved a hand at the tall, lanky man approaching them.

Sam saw his brother's acknowledging nod with surprise. The time he'd spent in Stanford had given Dean a much better knowledge of the hunters in the country than he'd realised, and it was an ongoing source of astonishment that his brother had a much wider circle of friends and acquaintances than he'd imagined. Behind Trent, Marcus got out of his Nova, his eyes on the Watcher.

"Uh, Sam – this is Casper Trent, he's lending a hand," Twist continued, and Sam shook the hunter's hand, relieved to see nothing more than a mild curiosity in Trent's expression. He stepped back as Trent nodded to his brother.

"Been awhile," Trent offered. Dean's mouth lifted on one side.

"You been staying out of trouble?"

The lanky hunter looked down, running a self-conscious hand over his close-cropped hair. "Been real careful with the ladies."

Ellie cleared her throat, catching everyone's attention. "This is Penemue," she said, her gaze slipping around the loose circle of hunters. "He's going to help us. Penemue, this is Twist, Dwight, Marcus and Trent."

The angel nodded. Sam wondered if behind the Watcher's wary expression, he was worried about what he was about to do. _Just force the devil out of one vessel, angelic, and into another, demonic_ , he mused. He would've been worried. He would've been on the near shore of panic.

"Twist, you and Dwight stay here, give us a heads up if you see anything weird," Dean said, glancing up at the building's roof as thunder shook the air and the ground, reverberating through their bones. "Marcus, Trent, we'll need you inside, watching the halls. Building's gonna be impossible to protect completely, but we'll have salt and iron blocking off the Psych isolation ward from everything else."

Marcus nodded, Trent glancing sideways at him. "You expecting trouble?" he asked.

"By the bucketload," Dean said. "Everyone stays frosty."

Easier said than done, Sam thought, following his brother across the lot and into the loading dock at the rear of the hospital. They made their way up the steps and into the building as the wind whipped around the parking lot and the thunder spoke again.

* * *

The room holding the angel was in the corner of the second floor, nothing but a storage closet and single stall bathroom opposite, and the next room on the other side of the locked, barred and steel-meshed door to the rest of the floor. Meg had organised the transfer of Castiel to the isolation ward the day before, Dean had told her.

Walking with Penemue, past Marcus and Trent as they poured thick lines of salt across the entry and along the walls, Ellie watched the brothers in front of her. Sam's frequent sidelong glances at his older brother reinforced the uneasiness she was feeling. Dean had been pulsing with poorly-hidden tension even at the airport, but she'd had the feeling something else had happened while she'd been sleeping, something that'd made it worse. She couldn't think what it could've been, and there'd been no time to ask him.

He knocked at the room door and a woman opened it, peering out past him to the corridor, her eyes widening a little at the sight of the man with them.

 _The infamous Meg_ , Ellie thought. A flicked glance to her right showed Penemue's face remaining impassive as he returned the demon's regard.

The body of the woman she wore was slight. Dark hair fell stringy and unbrushed down past her shoulders. Her skin was pale, her eyes dark and bruised-looking around the sockets. She gave Dean a mocking smile as she pulled the door wider, stepping back to let them in.

Castiel sat on the bed, his eyes open but unseeing, his face blank. Ellie walked to the end of the bed and shrugged off her pack, opening it and drawing out the silk-wrapped torc. She handed it to the Watcher.

On the other side of the bed, Dean dropped his black gear bag, unzipping it and pulling out the mottled ceramic bottle of holy oil. He glanced at her, passing it across the bed and she took it, pulling out the stopper and looking around the room. Sam was pouring thick, sparkling lines of salt across the window ledges and into the vents. He worked his way quickly around the room to the doorway as she scanned the interior.

Between the end of the bed and the wall opposite was the largest clear floor space. Stepping around the bed, she poured the circle; the thick, viscous liquid barely splashing as it hit the vinyl floor. The scent it released was dryish, almost sweet, faintly bitter; sand and desiccated plants, a subtle hint of underlying cedar. It brought to her mind's eye images of desert, of rolling dunes and dried up bones, bleached and endless sky from horizon to horizon.

"Any activity around here?" Dean asked the demon, taking the shotguns and boxes of shells from the bag.

"Nothing major," Meg replied. "The Fallen have their eye on this plane. I can feel them."

"Cambion, aren't you?" Penemue asked her.

"I don't think there's a word to describe what I am," she told him, turning to the angel lying on the bed.

Ellie glanced up at the demon's derisive tone, stoppering the bottle. The Watcher's expression was still neutral, showing nothing of what he was thinking. Azazel's daughter, Dean had said. He hadn't known anything of Meg's mother. The cambion were the offspring of demons and human women. While definitely a demon, Meg's father had been an angel once.

"The circle will protect us?" Meg directed the question to Dean. "They won't be able to see Lucifer when I'm in it?"

It could've been a trick of the light, that gleam of something in her eyes, there and gone. Ellie walked to the bed, watching Meg periphally as she put the bottle of holy oil in her pack. Her fingers pushed and slid through the other items filling it until she felt the familiar silk and knotted string. They closed around the small, silk bag and she undid the knots by feel, drawing out the round, thin coin and hiding it in her closed fist.

"Nothing will see you while you are in it," Penemue told the demon. "It will cut off any connection to the other planes completely."

"Then what?" Meg kept her gaze on Dean, ignoring the Watcher.

"Then we see how badly scrambled Cas' marbles are," Dean replied with a shrug. "And hope he can give us some intel on getting help to shut the archdemons up for good."

"You think Cas'll be sane after this?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest. "C'mon, Dean, look at him."

"Are you going to be strong enough to handle the devil?" Dean countered, one brow rising.

She nodded. "Don't you worry about me."

Leaving her pack at the end, Ellie walked up to the head of the bed, sidling past Meg to set a pillar candle on the nightstand. She lit it and turned, her backward step jostling the demon.

"Sorry."

"No problem," Meg said, smiling coolly at her. "You're the one had Crowley all hot and bothered, right?"

"One way to put it," Ellie agreed cautiously. "Although, he was more interested in leverage at the time."

"Yeah," Meg said, looking from her to Dean, her expression frankly speculative. "Going to be a daddy, I hear, Dean."

The look he gave her was arctic. He jerked his head toward the circle on the floor. "You ready? Let's do this."

"Touchy," Meg pouted, sauntering around the bed and stopping in the centre of the circle. "How, exactly, is this going to work?"

"I will force the frequency of Lucifer from Castiel," Penemue said, twisting the gold torc open and slipping it around his neck. "And into you."

"With that pretty little necklet?"

"The torc is to prevent Lucifer from entering me, and to give me the focus to keep him moving," the Watcher told her. "That's all."

"So it's _mano a mano_ between you and Satan?" Meg asked. She glanced down at the circle. "I hope you're stronger than you look."

"Sam, you ready?" Ellie asked, setting the second candle on the dresser on the other side of the bed and lighting it. The demon was far too confident, she thought uneasily. Too casually accepting of the plan, of what they wanted.

"Yeah," Sam said, capping the canister and dropping it into his gear bag. He caught the pump action Dean tossed at him with one hand, the box of shells with the other and loaded the gun. Ellie touched the hilt of the knife at her hip and took the sawn-off from Dean as she walked back to the foot of the bed.

Penemue moved to the edge of the bed, his eyes on Castiel. The angel was cowering against the wall, his vessel's deep blue eyes wide and terrified, staring at some internal vision of horror.

"Castiel."

The Watcher leaned forward and gripped Cas' forearm above the wrist, extending his other arm out to Meg. She took a step to the edge of the circle and extended her arm, the Watcher's hand closing around her wrist, turning her arm to lock her hand around his.

Penemue closed his eyes.

The flare of red, deep within the blue of Castiel's eyes was startling. It grew and brightened, glowing as it spread through the blood vessels of the angel's face and reached around his skull, a crawling web of bright neon red.

Ellie watched it carefully, distantly aware of Dean's unconscious nod in her periphery. It was freaky, she thought, remembering his description of that light transferring from Sam to Cas. It pulsated, at a steady rate, and she wondered if it was matching the angel's heartbeat, or some other rhythm, necessary to itself. She shifted her gaze to Penemue's face, outlined in the reflected carmine glow, the dark winged brows drawing together as his concentration deepened.

"He's resisting."

Her voice was no louder than an exhaled breath, the thought vocalised involuntarily. She'd had her doubts about Lucifer's presence. Until now, she thought. It was sentient. Thinking. Feeling. As much as the devil could feel, she reminded herself.

The light moved in incremental jerks and snatches, being dragged from the angel, through the big blood vessels of the neck, through the brachial arteries and veins, and down the arm. When it reached the Watcher's hand, tightly clasped around the angel's wrist, it surged suddenly, leaving the angel completely and racing up Penemue's arm, filling his chest and lighting up ribs and collar bones and spine, throbbing in time with his heart.

The Watcher's face crumpled as pain filled him, his breath coming fast and shallow through a tightly clamped jaw. The pulsing of the light increased and against the thin skin of Penemue's neck, she saw his pulse beating more rapidly, keeping time with the irresistible rhythm.

* * *

The brilliant red light writhed upwards, through the arteries and veins from the heart toward the neck. It stopped, brightening and fading when it reached the barrier of the golden collar lying against the Watcher's skin. Sweat beaded and dripped from Penemue's face, his white shirt darkening under the arms and around the neck, every muscle of his construct taut and rigid in the struggle with the power seeking to take him over.

For a long moment, the angel, Watcher and demon seemed frozen into a tableau, none of them moving. Dean saw Penemue drag in a deep breath, the rasp of it loud in the strange silence of the room. The Watcher's expression hardened, his eyes screwing shut tightly and the red light flinched away from the collar, racing across the shoulder and down into the man's arm, his skin mottling and flickering as it flowed through the blood vessels, muscle and tendon contracting violently with its passing.

Dude looked like he'd stuck his finger into an electrical socket, Dean thought, his muscles twitching in sympathy with the Watcher's reactions. He realised why Ellie'd believed only the Watcher could help them. No one else, except for Cas, would have been anywhere near strong enough to force Lucifer out of one vessel and into another, and without the collar, he had the distinct feeling the Watcher would've had some problems resisting the devil's possession as well.

The light stopped, down near the elbow, for a long moment. Penemue tipped his head back, lips drawn back from his teeth and every muscle contracted to steel rigidity. There was a flash from the torc, Dean thought, too slow to catch it properly, but the twisting red in the Watcher's arm started to move downward again, jerkily at first, increasing speed as it neared his wrist.

Meg flinched, her body convulsing as it passed from the Watcher into her hand, shooting up her arm and spreading through her chest and neck. She flung her head back, the tendons in her neck as tight as tensioned wire when the red glow surged into her head, her low moan barely audible through clenched teeth. Her eyes flashed black then red, iris and white disappearing, her fingers digging into Penemue's arm.

 _Crack! Crack! Boom! Crack! Boom!_

The sound of gunfire in the hall made them all jump, its sudden intrusion shattering the silence; rapid semi-automatic fire from Marcus' AK, interspersed with the concussive booms of a shotgun. It was instantly followed by the thunder of feet on the linoleum and a crash outside the door, and Dean saw his little brother lurch forward. The lights went out and the door slammed inward, Sam yelling as the edge took him in the shoulder, the wildly flickering pillar candles on either side of Cas' bed creating a dark and flickering vision of bodies and black eyes and Sam disappearing in their midst.

Dean automatically took a step toward his brother, and Ellie's hand flashed out, holding him still.

"Dean! No! The circle!"

Meg's head snapped down and around, the red light gone, her eyes a flat black, corner to corner. In the corridor outside of the room, more gunfire roared and screams – of rage or pain, he couldn't tell – were drowned out by the shocking crash of thunder close by.

 _The circle. Meg. Lucifer. Get your shit together_.

Pulling out his lighter, he dropped the lit flame onto the circle, and the oil caught, racing around the edge. He saw Meg dart through the last unlit quadrant before it closed, frustration choking him as she looked back over her shoulder, her mouth stretched in a wide, derisive smile.

 _Sonofabitch!_

She'd played him, played them all, knowing the demons would be coming, knowing what the circle was, that she had to get out before the flames enclosed it. _Cocksucking demon skank!_

Dragging the Colt from his belt, he tried to force his way through the seething mass of bodies that seemed to fill the room. A second's glimpse showed him Sam, his back against the far wall, stabbing and slicing with Ruby's knife, with a growing pile of bodies at his feet. He swung around to see the Watcher, back to back with Ellie, her knife blood-red and the Watcher wielding a much longer blade, the metal black and shining oilily in the shifting light and shadows.

He caught sight of Meg near the doorway and shot the two men blocking his way in quick succession, both bullets hitting them in the face, blue fire crackling outward from the entrance holes and flooding from their eyes. Three more crowded in front of him, against him, grabbing his arms and pinning them to his sides. He dropped to one knee, pulling them down with him and swung a shoulder, knocking the one to his right onto the floor and freeing his hand. The round bore of the handgun appeared, six inches from his eyes and he stared at it disbelievingly.

 _9mm automatic, fourteen in the mag, one in the chamber, crosshatch grip, brushed steel_ , his mind fed him the details of the gun automatically. _Beretta. Not likely to jam_.

The barrel end wavered then fell abruptly and he glanced up, squinting as the demon's face lit up in violent shades of red and gold, its mouth dropping open, the blood-smeared tip of a fine blade protruding over its tongue. Behind the demon's luridly lit head, he saw Ellie, her eyes narrowed and her face expressionless. The knife blade was yanked back and the demon fell to the floor.

* * *

Castiel blinked rapidly, lifting his hands to cover his ears as another crash of thunder shook the window glass. He stared around the room in confusion. It was full of people.

Full of demons, he corrected himself a second later, his expression screwing into a moue of distaste as he caught a glimpse of a face, under the flesh and bone of the person it wore.

Above the shouts and screams and the low rumble of more thunder, he heard a once-familiar voice and turned his head, eyes widening in surprise at the sight of the Watcher, pressed between two demons, his black blade plunging into one and then the other. Beyond Penemue, he could see Sam, a demon's hand tightening around the younger Winchester's neck as three others punched and kicked at him indiscriminately. Scanning past the hunter, he saw Ellie and Dean by the open doorway, backs together, fighting off another four.

He swung his legs off the edge of the bed and reached out, hands that hadn't been his to control for some time fumbling as he tried to get a grip on the two heads of the nearest possessed. His fingers tightened in their hair and he closed his eyes, opening himself to the Divine plane.

The conduit opened smoothly and harmonically, filling him with silent melody and mellifluous light. The power came like fire, white and pure and cleansing, flowing through his vessel's hands into the demons he held, burning demon essence and scorching human body at the same time.

"Close your eyes," he yelled, his vessel's voice hardly audible over the hellspawn's shrieks and curses and howls, or the thunder rumbling outside.

"COVER YOUR EYES!" He lifted his hands.

Fire. Light. Power. Not even the angels knew what it truly was. It filled his vessel, harmonising precisely with the frequency and song that was his alone, rushing through him, the energy or life-force or love of billions of souls.

Exploding into the room, the piercing argentine light drove out every shadow, burning through the meatsuits to the blackened essences of the demons; incinerating most, the remainder smoking out into the corridor, or sending their vessels crashing through the windows to fall to the parking lot below, ribbons of charcoal smoke leaving broken bodies behind.

In the aftermath, as the light flickered and faded away, something like silence returned to the isolation ward, the rumble of thunder and the cracks of lightning fading quickly as the conjured storm broke apart and began to move away.

Dean turned around slowly, the Colt falling to his side. Castiel saw exhaustion and something that seemed like defeat in the man's face before he ducked his head, tucking the long-barrelled firearm back into the belt of his jeans.

Near the windows, Sam pushed himself away from the wall, his gaze on the ragged tear through his shirt, fingers plucking at it and wincing when the shirt darkened, his blood soaking into the edges.

Picking his way across the fallen bodies, the angel stopped in front of the young man, laying his fingertips on Sam's forehead. The wound vanished, leaving the glistening fresh blood on the shirt.

"I'm sorry, Sam."

Shaking his head, Sam shrugged. "Good timing, as usual, Cas."

In his eyes, the angel saw a flash of pain, a hint of regret. It wasn't all right, Cas thought. It was never going to be all right, but Dean's younger brother didn't seem to hold his mistakes against him. Turning back to the room, he looked at the Watcher, the earlier surprise dissolving as he realised why Penemue was here.

* * *

 _Meg was gone._

 _Lucifer was gone._

 _They'd failed._

Dean shook his head very slightly. _He'd_ failed. Involuntary as breathing, he'd seen Sam stumble and had forgotten the circle, forgotten why they'd been there and he'd blown it.

He turned and looked at Ellie, his gaze scanning over her fast but thoroughly. There were scratches on her neck, reddened but not bleeding. "You okay?"

She nodded. "You?"

He shrugged. "I missed Meg."

"We'll find her."

She looked past him, her eyes on the angel and the Watcher. "Can either of you see into Hell right now?"

"No." Penemue said, wiping the black blade clean on the edge of the bed sheet and sliding it back into its sheath.

Cas' response was terse. "Only the archangels can see into Hell at will."

"Are you all right, Cas?"

He turned away. "No."

Watching the angel as he headed for the door, Dean felt a flash of sympathy. Cas' memories had returned, even before he'd taken Lucifer into himself. The angel had a lot to think about.

* * *

Sam leaned on the hood of the car, tapping the keys of the laptop, brow furrowed as he studied the screen.

Against the side of the Jeep, arms crossed over his chest, Dean kept his gaze on the asphalt under his feet, trying to keep his focus on what next. No one had said anything, or even given him any kind of accusing look. He wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.

They'd gone out into the hallway and found Marcus, lying near the barred door. The door had been pulled to pieces, bits of mesh hanging from the bent inward bars, the salt line scattered more than six feet in front of it. Marcus'd been sitting up, a gash across his forehead. Trent, they'd found halfway down the stairs, unconscious and bruised but still breathing. Dwight'd had his arm broken and a through-and-through on the outside of one thigh. Twist'd lost some skin down one side of his face and had several cracked ribs. Cas had touched each of them and healed them all.

Next to the pickup, Penemue stood with Castiel, his hand occasionally reaching up, fingers searching the base of his throat. Shooting a sideways glance as the movement tugged at his peripheral vision, he wondered if the fallen angel could still feel the weight of the necklet. It was once again wrapped in silk, in Ellie's pack.

She was sitting in the passenger seat of the pickup, the door open. Lifting his head, he glanced at her. Head tipped back against the seat, her eyes closed. The angel had touched her too, the scratch marks and bruises gone from her neck. She just looked tired. He straightened, taking a step toward the pickup when Sam spoke.

"They're all gone. No signs anywhere."

The Watcher nodded. "Called back. Their job is done."

"You think Meg's gone looking for the archdemons?" Sam asked.

"No," Castiel spoke, his voice heavy. "They would rip Lucifer from her and use him to their own ends. She will run from them, as long as she can."

"Can she hide him? Herself?" Dean looked at the angel.

"I doubt it."

Penemue turned to Cas. "I must return. My brothers need to know what has transpired here – and the Others will also be gathering a force, hoping to use the Morning Star to their advantage." Glancing at Ellie, he added, "I'll return the torc to the monastery."

Castiel nodded. "I'll take you. I too will need to talk to the Watchers. Heaven has been – it is in a state of chaos right now."

He laid his hand on Penemue's shoulder and they disappeared, the sound of fluttering wings and the sigh of the displaced air as it rushed to fill the space annoyingly familiar to Dean.

"Hey!" He looked around the parking lot in frustration. "Still need to talk to you, Cas!"

"Guess we're done here?" Marcus said, his gaze flicking between Sam and Dean

Dean gave up glaring around the lot and shrugged. "We have to find Meg. Anyone with any ideas on how to do that, step up now."

From the passenger seat of the pickup, Ellie said, "We can track her."

Turning to look at her, Dean asked, "Yeah? How?"

She held up a small gold coin. "With this."

"Is that Crowley's?" Sam peered at the coin in her hand.

"One of them," she confirmed, slipping the coin back into her pocket. "The other one is on Meg. I put it there before she went into the circle. Just in case."

Dean looked at her for a long moment, uncertain if the feeling shredding his guts was relief or anger. "Just in case I screwed up?"

She closed her eyes briefly. "Just in case she figured out our intentions weren't entirely benevolent and got out of the circle."

In the strained silence between them, Twist looked from one to the other. "So … uh. All good then? This mean we can grab some shuteye before we start following her?"

"Yep," she said. "It's going to take a couple of hours to get a lock on her. I'll call in the morning."

"Right you are," Twist said, turning for his truck.

"Dwight?" Ellie looked at the older hunter as he headed for the passenger door of Twist's truck. "Have you heard from Frank lately?"

He nodded. "In New Mexico, a week ago. You need him?"

"I think so."

"I'll get hold of him, find out where he is and let you know. You'll be around here for a night or two?"

Nodding, Ellie pulled her legs into the pickup, sliding across to the driver's seat and staring at the empty ignition. Marcus, Trent, Dwight and Twist turned away and headed back to their vehicles.

Sam's gaze swivelled from the retreating hunters to Dean. "Motel near the on ramp?" he asked diffidently. "We could crash for the night."

"Yeah," Dean said, looking past his brother to the truck. "We'll see you there."

"Alright." Sam picked up the laptop and got into the Jeep.

Walking to the pickup, Dean stopped beside the driver's door. He leaned on the window frame. "Were you, uh, planning on going without me?"

Opening her eyes, she shook her head. "Just need to keep moving," she said with a tired smile. "If I stop, I might not move again till I've had eight hours."

"You'll need these," he said, pulling the keys from his coat pocket and holding them up. She gazed at them without moving. "Alright, slide over, I'll drive."

Shifting back across the bench seat, Ellie sighed.

"Room for the night?" Dean glanced at her.

"Yes. Food. Shower. Bed." She curled into the corner of the truck, and closed her eyes.

He nodded and pulled out, checking in the rearview mirror that Sam was following them. Twist and Dwight made a left as they came out of the lot, heading south.

* * *

Ellie opened her eyes again as the pickup stopped, the engine dying. They were in the parking lot of a small strip mall, she realised, blinking in an attempt to get her eyes focussing.

The driver's door opened and closed and she turned her head belatedly, watching Dean heading for the brightly-lit fast food restaurant she could see on the corner. Exhaustion had hit her unexpectedly, maybe with the anticlimax of losing Meg, maybe that plus the cumulative effects of three days of near non-stop travel and ever-increasing tension. She tried to remember the last time she'd eaten, a vague memory of some kind of sandwich on the plane flitting through her mind.

Too much flying, driving, planning, trying to organise and figure out at the same time what the bigger picture was going to be … she grimaced at the snarl of memories of the last couple of days. She hadn't been eating or sleeping enough, and the baby growing inside of her would take what it needed from her, the doc in Douglas had said, whether she was providing enough for both of them or not.

Rubbing her wrist over one temple, she smiled at her naïveté, thinking she could do everything like normal and not pay for it somehow. New gig, she told herself. She'd just have to remember to do everything by the numbers until it got to be habit.

Leaning against the seat back, she let her eyelids drop again. If Meg didn't find the coin, they would still need someone to stay in one place and track her movements. Frank would be best, she thought. The ex-military computer technician had taken to demon hunting like a duck to water, the sometimes over-zealous psychological issues he still carried around driving him to work around the clock. With Ray's help, they'd tapped into a series of overseas satellites and watching Roman's activities from afar wasn't going to take up all his time.

She wouldn't want to be found. That was a part of the plan they'd explained to the demon in some detail, what the archdemons wanted with Lucifer, the possibility the rogue fallen and their nephilim offspring would also be looking for the devil to further their ambitions.

Ellie's eyes opened. If Meg was nephilim – somehow – her soul might give Lucifer the power he needed to regain his strength. She frowned as she realised she should've asked Penemue more about his twice-fallen brother.

 _Did it matter_ , she wondered? Knuckling her eyes and wincing as they stung under the pressure, she wasn't sure if it did. So long as Meg stayed on the run, and they could find her, and trap her again in the circle of holy fire, even an increase in Lucifer's strength wouldn't matter that much.

She started a little as the driver's door opened, the cool night air carrying rich, thick odours of freshly-cooked food into the cab.

"Got you a burger and salad," Dean said, setting the paper sack on the seat between them. "Okay?"

"Yeah," she said, straightening in the seat. A glance past him showed Sam walking out of the restaurant, carrying his own paper sack. She hadn't even noticed him pulling in, she realised.

Dean got in and pulled the door closed, turning on the engine and twisting around in the seat to reverse out.

"Motel's just another couple of blocks."

"Good," she said, feeling saliva collecting in her mouth as the ridiculously delicious scents wreathed around her. Her stomach was doing the rumba and she had to breathe deeply to keep from attacking the food there and then. How could she've missed this level of hunger, she wondered? Two months ago, she'd been eating like a horse.

They followed the Jeep out of the lot and onto the street, and Ellie tried to pretend the growing tension, almost as tangible as the mouth-watering odours of the food between them, wasn't something she'd have to deal with. There hadn't been time to tell him about the coin, or her suspicions about the demon, she thought. He would just have to understand that.

The motel was just two blocks away, the crunch of the gravel lot loud under the tyres as Dean crawled up the drive and parked in front of the office. He got out again, and Ellie leaned over the sack, reaching in and snagging one of his fries. It was ambrosial and she slid her hand back in to take a handful.

When he returned, a few minutes later, and dropped the key onto the seat, the sack was scrunched closed again. He drove around the cinderblock building and pulled into a slot on the other side, glancing across at her and handing her the room key.

"You wanna take in the food?" he asked, opening the door. "I'll get the rest."

Nodding, Ellie opened her door, shouldering the pack and grabbing the paper sack. Sam's Jeep growled around the corner of the building and pulled in, a few rooms down from theirs. Turning the key in the lock, Ellie walked in and turned on the lights, grateful to see it was reasonably clean. Not, she thought, that she would've kicked up at this point. The bed looked comfortable.

Dropping her pack beside it, she put the sack on the small table and opened it, pulling out the wrapped burgers, the somewhat depleted bag of fries and the plastic container of salad. A six pack of beer was nestled into the side of the bag and she pulled that out too, turning to put it into the small bar fridge as she dumped the paper bag into the trash.

She sat down at the table as Dean walked in, clanking slightly when he shifted his grip on the gear bag. He set both duffels down next to the door after he'd closed it, taking out a canister of salt and running the lines along windows, vents and doorway and tossing the empty container into the trash when he'd finished.

She should apologise, she thought, taking another bite of the burger and chewing fast. He looked just as tired as she felt and she was leaving their protection entirely to him. Most of the salad was already gone and Dean's fries weren't making much of a bulge in their bag anymore. She should've asked him to get double of everything.

He walked to the table and sat down, brows rising as he noticed the limp sack of fries. She felt his glance on her, but he didn't say anything, unwrapping his burger and starting to eat.

Finishing the burger, Ellie wadded up the wrappings and got to her feet to take them to the trash. She stopped at the fridge and pulled out a beer for Dean, then grabbed a glass from the counter, filling it at the sink and carrying it back to the table.

"I ate some of your fries," she said, sitting down and sliding his beer across to him.

"I noticed."

She glanced up to see a puzzled half-smile on his face. "Sorry."

Dean shrugged. "You, uh, still hungry? I can make another run?"

Shaking her head, Ellie sipped at her water. "No, I'm good. Just tired now."

"You stop at all in the last few days?"

"Not really," she admitted, thinking it over. "We ate in the hotel in Egypt, and I got a couple of hours sleep on the plane to Kabul, plus a few on the way home."

"Doesn't sound like much."

Finishing her water, she studied his face. "Doesn't look like you did much better?"

"I got enough," he told her, scrunching his trash together and knocking the top off the beer. "Ellie, were you going to tell me about the coin?"

The doubt in his eyes tugged at her, somewhere deep. "Of course. It was just a precaution."

He nodded, looking down at the table. "Yeah."

There was an edge in his voice, something raw.

"When Meg was asking about the circle, about how it would work, I thought – I got the impression she had something else in mind," she said. "I wasn't sure, and I couldn't have said anything to you about it at the time in any case, but I had the coins and I thought, why not? I put one on her when I was doing the candles."

"Yeah. No, I understand." The edge was still there. "Just as well, right?"

Seeing the flash of guilt that crossed his features, she sighed. "Don't blame yourself for trained reflex, Dean."

He stared at the table, his expression unreadable.

Turning away, she looked at the bathroom door for a long moment. She wanted a shower, to get rid of the smell of brimstone and blood and sweat and give her muscles some relief, but she was too damned tired. Stripping, she tossed her clothing onto the floor and pulled back the covers. She crawled onto the bed, reaching out to drag the thin sheet and lightweight bedspread back over herself with a sigh. Rolling onto her side away from the kitchen light, she closed her eyes.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow, she'd talk it out with him. When she could think straight.

She heard him moving around the room, soft background noises of which she was only just aware. The kitchen light went off and the bathroom light went on, and she listened to him getting undressed, jeans and boots dropping to the floor heavily, then the sound of the shower, her senses attentuating as her thoughts refused to settle down and leave her alone.

Choosing Sam over anything else was something she thought he didn't have any control over. Protecting his brother had been trained into him every bit as deeply as any of his skills, from such a young age, it wasn't a conscious response.

It hadn't occurred to her to secrete the coin on Meg because she'd thought he might not light the oil in time. The thought dragged at her, fighting her desire to forget about it and sleep. She'd been hedging her bets. That was all.

The shower went off, and the tap over the basin went on. A moment later, the bathroom light, peeking along the edges of the closed door, went off and the door opened, releasing steam and a scent of soap, and under that, the faint minty smell of toothpaste.

As he walked around the end of the bed to his side, Ellie rolled back onto her right side. She heard the quiet sigh of his towel being dropped and felt the dip of the mattress as he lay down beside her. For long moments, she waited, hearing the steady inhale and exhale behind her. But he didn't move. For the first time, he didn't come to lie against her.

In the darkness, she realised she wanted the comfort of his arms around her, but she didn't have the energy to talk about what she'd done or why she hadn't told him. Letting out a resigned exhale, she realised she wouldn't get the one without the other. Five days of non-stop motion dragged at her. Telling herself she could deal with it in the morning, she buried her disappointment and let thought go.

* * *

Dean lay on his back, listening to her breathe. She was asleep. She hadn't rolled over to curl against him. He wanted to hold her, but something in the conversation they'd had, in the way she was lying there, apart from him, stopped him. He understood about making last minute decisions, but why the hell hadn't she told him when Cas'd cleaned out the room? He'd been carrying the guilt of letting Meg get away, knowing he'd screwed up – she could have told him then, thrown him a bone.

He'd thought they had the big things out in the open. Had thought she'd told him what knowing him – loving him – had cost her, but the Watcher had blown that certainty out of the water. How much else was there he didn't know about?

Turning his head, he looked at her shape under the thin covers, the smooth fall from shoulder to waist, the gentle curve up to hip and the long slope of her legs. Against the white pillow, in the dimness of the room, her hair was a loose, dark pool, devoid of its usual bright colour.

She knew him, better than anyone else, even his brother. She knew what he'd been through, what he'd done, how he'd felt about all of it. When they'd gotten back to the cabin, after Sunrise, he'd thought he'd made it clear, had thought she'd told him everything, practically – all the things that'd hurt and had changed things between them – but as he listened to her steady, even breaths, the feeling he was wrong about that kept strengthening. He'd told her everything. All the things that'd mattered to him. She was still an enigma to him.

He wasn't sure why he wanted to know. He trusted her, had trusted her with everything – his memories, his feelings, his life – she'd never betrayed that trust. Wasn't that enough?

The question forced a gusting exhale. It didn't seem like it. Rolling away from her carefully, he stared at the patterns, made by the streetlights through the thin, open-weave curtains, on the wall in front of him.

She had friends, powerful ones judging by what she'd been able to accomplish, people who would put their jobs on the line for her, their lives. People he didn't know, hadn't even heard about. Lovers? He shied away from that thought; it was too close to the secondary doubts he was trying to ignore.

They'd hunted together a few times over the years, but her network of friends – the hunters and those involved in the periphery of the life, contacts she'd made with her first partner – spread across the country, across the world, and she'd hardly mentioned them, rarely taken him to meet any of the others. She'd known Bobby but neither she nor Bobby had seen fit to mention that before she'd turned up at his place.

Why hadn't she told him?

 _Ask me_ , she'd said to him, a long time ago. _Anything you want to know_.

He had, from time to time. Sometimes he got answers. Sometimes, not.

 _Why didn't you ask?_

The small voice, deep inside, wondered. He drew in a long breath, and held it. It was a good question. Why hadn't he asked? Sam obviously had. Frank had. Bobby must have. Why hadn't he?

Twisting onto his back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, he listened to her breathing, in and out in the quiet, settled patterns of sleep.

He was tired. He couldn't imagine that there was a word for what she was feeling. Exhaustion was somewhere in the ballpark, maybe. And then, he realised with a flush of discomfort, he'd brought up what'd happened. Not entirely because she hadn't let him off the hook earlier, he knew. He'd wanted to hear he hadn't fucked up. Had wanted her to tell him … tell him that automatic and involuntary reaction hadn't nearly lost them everything.

His breath slipped out in a long exhale. He understood now why she hadn't rolled over to him, looked for his warmth, for whatever comfort he could offer. Tonight, she'd had no more to give. Inside of her, there was a child, taking what it needed from her. And he hadn't even thought of that, until now.

Sliding across the mattress, he eased his arm under the pillow that cradled her head, inching closer until the length of his body pressed against hers, his arm draped lightly over her hip. He thought she took a deeper breath, her body relaxing a little more, but he couldn't be sure. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent, of her skin, of her hair, and took a deeper breath himself.

 _You fucked up today, not her_ , he thought. And at least some of the uncertainty he'd felt at the hospital, some of the distraction, a niggling doubt that'd driven his actions, had been because of the relationship he'd seen between the Watcher and the woman lying next to him. He hadn't understood it at the time, and he didn't now, but there had been a familiarity between them … the Watcher'd known things about her he didn't … and it'd unsettled him.

He looked down at Ellie's face, her features barely visible in the faint light. Had there been something between her and the fallen angel? There'd been an edge to Penemue's voice, as he'd recounted his story, subtle, but there. She'd done – what she'd done – not for the Watcher, but for him. And Penemue had not been happy about it, he thought. He closed his eyes, trying to separate the tangle of memory and emotion and thought.

He could ask her. He could ask her about everything. All the things he wanted to know. All the pieces that made up the puzzle of who she was, what had happened to her, what she had done, what she felt. He wasn't sure she'd tell him, but he could ask anyway.

What he couldn't do was to withdraw, let his reactions get in between them. His arms tightened a little around her and she shifted slightly, relaxing back against him.

* * *

 _ **8.00 a.m. July 2, 2012.**_

The knock on the door woke him instantly.

Dean looked down at Ellie, still sleeping in the curve of his arm. She hadn't woken. He moved slowly and carefully away from her, watching her resettle, a small line appearing between her brows as if she felt his absence. She rolled over and the line disappeared. He tucked the covers around her and pulled on his jeans, walking to the door.

Sam stood outside, holding three cups of steaming coffee, about to take a step into the room when Dean blocked his way, shaking his head.

"Still sleeping. I'll come to your room," he said in a low voice. Sam nodded, turning back. Grabbing shirt, coat, socks and boots and the key, he followed his brother along the walkway.

"Is Ellie all right?" Sam unlocked the door, swinging it open and setting the coffees on the table. Turning around, he watched Dean hop around the room as he pulled on a sock.

"Yeah, just didn't get much sleep the last few days, and she needs more now, not less." He managed to drag the recalcitrant sock over his foot and shove his feet into his boots, pulling the shirt over his head as he sat down.

"Yeah, of course." Sam shook his head. "I keep forgetting about that."

Dean shot him a surprised look. "How?"

"Well, just everything else that's going on." His brother shrugged. "Cas turn up yet?"

"No." Dean swallowed a mouthful of the hot coffee. "I'm wondering if he will. He was – he was pretty devastated when his memories returned."

Sam looked at him, his expression wry. "Aren't we all?"

"He was talking about body counts in Heaven and on earth," Dean added, remembering the angel's horror-struck expression at the hospital. "I don't think he knew how much was him and how much was the levis, fucking with him."

Sam looked up abruptly, staring past his shoulder. Dean's mouth twisted.

"And he's behind me, right now, isn't he?"

"Hey, Cas." Sam nodded. Twisting around in the chair, Dean looked at the angel.

"Just talking about you."

"Yes. I heard." Castiel moved to the third chair at the table, standing behind it. "Things are a lot worse than my ability to deal with my sins."

"Coffee?" Sam pushed the cup toward the third chair. Castiel glanced disinterestedly at it and shook his head.

"I returned Penemue to Jordan."

Dean frowned at him. "I thought he lived in Egypt?"

"His brothers are in Jordan," the angel said. "The information they have is not good."

"When is the news ever good?" Sam wondered aloud. "What's the word?"

"Those who fell for Lucifer are planning an alliance with the archdemons – or trying to," Cas said, his gaze moving restively around the room. "There are a lot of them."

"Uh, Penemue said the archdemons would regard them as betrayers." Dean gulped down more coffee. He wasn't sure he could take much more news on any front. It didn't just get worse. It got exponentially catastrophic. "They'd be thrown into Hell for it."

"Yes," Cas agreed. "I doubt whatever deals are made will be honoured. But right now, the Fallen want Lucifer." He paused, his gaze resting first on Sam, then moving to Dean. "I believe they'll accept whatever help they need in order to get him."

"What's the plan?" Sam picked up his coffee, exchanging a look with Dean.

"I have to return to Heaven," Castiel said, his mouth closing abruptly and a puzzled frown drawing his brows together. "That felt strange. As if I've said and done this exactly before."

Dean rolled his eyes at his coffee. "You have. A few times."

"We need you down here, Cas." Sam's brow furrowed as he looked at the angel. "What can you do in Heaven?"

Castiel was silent for a moment, his gaze travelling restlessly around the room before he finally looked back at Sam. "When the Horde of Hell rises to this plane, you are going to want an army ready to fight them," he replied, his tone mild.

Sam and Dean looked at each other.

"What?"

"They're going to try and take earth by force?" Sam said at the same time.

"Yes. I need to see how many of the Host survived the last year." An expression of mingled pain and shame contorted his features and he turned away. "How many survived me."

Dean glanced at his brother. "Cas –"

"Dean, it is essential to get Michael out of the Cage," Castiel cut him off. "He is the only one who can lead the Host."

The sound of wings filled the room for a moment, then was gone, along with the angel.

"Demons rising to take over earth." Sam ran his hand sharply through his hair.

"Raising Michael from the Pit." Dean tipped his head back, closing his eyes. He turned his head and opened his eyes, looking at his brother. "Good times."

Sam snorted. "Yeah."

* * *

Ellie rolled over across the bed, opening her eyes and squinting at her watch. Eleven thirty-seven.

She was starving and it drove her off the bed, to the bathroom for a fast shower, to get dressed. She was just pulling on her boots when the door opened and Dean came in, his gaze going straight to her.

"Hey," he said, closing the door and crossing the room. "Thought you might still be sleeping. How're you doing?"

"Mostly caught up." She smiled, and gave her boot a final tug. "Starving."

"There's a great place across the street, I could get you –"

"No, that's okay. I need the air, and some moving around." She looked around for her bag, extracting her wallet. "Have you and Sam eaten?"

"Yeah, but this is me, I can eat, no problem."

She nodded and stood up.

"Ellie." He stood in front of her, his hands sliding down her arms. "I'm sorry about last night."

She shook her head. "Don't say that, okay? You didn't do anything wrong."

Looking down at her, his neck prickling uncomfortably, he said, "I did a whole lot of things wrong. Why're you blowing me off?"

"I'm not." Her gaze dropped. "I just don't want to fight."

"I'm not fighting. I'm apologising." He ducked his head, trying to see her face. "I know I don't do it that often, but I thought you'd recognise it."

"I should've told you about the coin, when Cas did his thing, alright? I know that." She lifted her head, her eyes cutting to the side. "I'm not used to … not working on my own."

She pulled in a breath, lifting her head to look up at him. Shock hit like a hammer blow when he saw her eyes, brimming with unshed tears. "Ellie, uh … come on."

Ducking her head, she pulled away and instinctively, he let her go.

 _Don't_.

The prickle at the back of his neck strengthened. One stride and he caught her shoulders, turning her back to him and pulling her close, his arms enfolding her tightly.

"Hey, uh ..."

She stood in the circle of his arms, not speaking, not moving. He wondered nervously if he was doing the right thing … if she didn't want him here right now … if she wanted to be alone …

A shudder rattled through her, and into him. Her arms rose, wrapping around him slowly, shoulders shaking as she leaned in. Staring over her head at the wall, his stomach dipped. _The hell was going on?_ Her cheek was pressed hard against his chest and moisture was soaking into his shirt.

"It's okay … hey … it's okay." He lifted a hand, smoothing her hair, his heart pounding against his ribs. She was shaking like a leaf in a high wind, her breath coming out in gasps and sobs. Had he missed something? Done something? Not done something? Said or not said something? He would have to wait to find out. He didn't think she could talk through the tempest that had a hold of her.

It only lasted a few minutes, the wracking sobs tapering off into harsh breaths and arrhythmic hiccups. Breathing deeply to counteract the tension filling his chest and throat, Dean rested his chin on the crown of her head, one hand absently stroking her back, the other holding her as close as he could.

It wasn't the first time she'd cried in his arms, but those occasional occurrences had been shedding tension; gentle unwinding of stresses set aside and finally released. Not like this … this outpouring of emotion that was scaring the crap out of him.

"C'mon, what's going on? Ellie?"

Her chest expanded under his arms, ribs lifting as she drew in a deep breath.

"Hormones mostly, I think," she said, her voice thick and scratchy but level. "Just turning up the volume on everything I'm feeling."

The hell was she feeling that'd do that, he wondered unhappily. "Uh, what – what're you feeling?"

"The usual suspects. Fear. Doubt. Worry." She didn't move as she spoke, her cheek still pressed against him, her arms still around him. He looked down awkwardly, unable to see her face.

"About what?" He had missed something, he thought. A lot of things, by the sound of it.

The short laugh she gave turned into a hiccup. "Everything. Us, the world, Hell, Heaven, the baby, where to live … everything."

That was a lot of things. He hadn't thought about those things much, his attention'd been mainly on how to get Meg back and what Dick'd been doing while they'd been chasing around Hell.

"Yeah, well … uh, okay," he said, not sure if he could provide any reassurances on any of it. "We'll figure it out, you know that, right?"

She nodded, lifting a hand and wiping at her eyes, scrubbing it over her face. "I know that. I do. It's – it's irrational, all this damned emotion."

"Uh, yeah," he said uncertainly. "Then you're, uh, okay now?"

"I'm fine." Pushing a little against his hold on her, she stepped back, tilting her face up. "I never get worried about stuff, you know? Never. I've always been able to deal with whatever came along."

He couldn't disagree. From the moment he'd seen her, at Ellen's bar, she'd struck him as being capable and in control.

"Never even thought of being worried about p-p-practical things," she continued, her voice suddenly dropping. "N-n-now …"

He stared disbelievingly as fresh tears rose in her eyes, spilling over, and pulled her close again. The sobbing was softer this time, but no less raw-sounding. _What the hell?_

After a moment, it seemed to stop and she was still, her forehead resting against the base of his throat. She pulled in a deep breath and forced it out, then another, not looking at him when she pulled back for the second time.

"This could just keep going on, Dean. Give me a minute, will you? I've got to get this under some kind of control."

He let her go, and she turned away, hurrying into the bathroom.

There was a knock on the door behind him. Turning around, he opened it. Sam stood on the walkway, his brother's gaze on his watch.

"You ready?" Sam asked, lifting his head, his forehead immediately furrowing up as he noticed the expression on Dean's face. "What's wrong?"

The bathroom door opened, and Dean shook his head. He couldn't explain it adequately anyway. "Later."

Ellie walked over to them, her eyes swollen and red, but her face smooth and calm. "Okay, I'm fine. I just need to eat."

Nodding, he followed her out, closing the door behind them.

* * *

 _ **Two hours later.**_

Dean sat at the small, square table next to the room's kitchen counter. Ellie'd taken the truck to an internet café, looking for a high-speed connection to talk to Ray and Patrick. He scowled at the sites listed on the screen in front of him. He'd been through a dozen and all they'd told him was what Ellie'd already said. Hormones. He needed more than that. He needed to know what the hell would happen next.

"What're you doing?"

Sam's voice behind him made him jump in the chair and his fingers fumbled across the keys.

"Pregnancy sites?" Sam asked, leaning over his shoulder. "Wow."

"Not funny."

"Kind of is," Sam countered, grinning at him. "This about what happened this morning?"

"Yeah," Dean said, turning slightly as Sam pulled a chair around the table and sat down. "How often you seen Ellie cry?"

"Uh, once," Sam said, after a moment's thought. "Well, she walked away before she actually started."

"Right." Dean shook his head. "This morning she cried twice, in the space of ten minutes."

"Uh huh."

"Because of the hormones, she said," Dean added, waving a hand at the screen.

"Uh huh?"

"All I can find are these rainbows-and-happy-happy sites that don't tell me what's going on!"

"Oh." Sam leaned across the table, pulling the laptop around to face him. "What'd you –"

He peered at the search words Dean had put in. "Crying, pregnancy."

"They say it's normal."

"Probably is," Sam said, his expression thoughtful as he shifted his gaze between the laptop screen and Dean. "Uh, let's widen the criteria a bit?"

"To what?"

"Uh … pregnancy, hormones, emotions …"

"Isn't that what I wrote?"

"Yeah, uh, not really," Sam said, watching the screen fill up with the listing. ""Uh huh. Lots of sites."

He started reading. "Okay. So, uh … _pregnancy can be a real roller-coaster ride of the emotions - highs and lows and everything in between. Some women appear to 'bloom' during pregnancy; they appear full of life, happiness and vitality whereas other women are tearful and apprehensive_."

"And some women switch between both," Dean muttered darkly, shooting a glance at the front door.

" _These feelings can often be very intense. Some women have unstable moods and feelings of depression, often for no apparent reason. None of these emotional responses is 'right' or 'wrong'. Physical feelings can also be intensified in pregnancy with many women finding that their sexual_ … uh _, drive and … appetite increases, particularly in the first and second trimesters. Orgasms_ … uh _, orgasms can be reached more easily or are stronger during this time._ "

Sam cleared his throat and shot a sideways look at Dean, his mouth twisting. "Judging by the expression on your face, I take it you already know that part?"

"It, uh, might've come up."

" _Pregnancy is an intense experience; women experience huge hormonal changes and face a big life-changing event. There are natural concerns about the big changes a baby brings to a couple, their relationship with each other, and to their work, family and social lives. Worries about the timing of the pregnancy, and about possible financial stresses in the future are common_."

"Yeah, right," Dean said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "An' then there're the concerns she might have about the devil running around, an' the possible uprising of Hell and a full-on war on earth; probably thinking about black-blooded monsters waiting to chomp anyone, or fallen angels wanting to bring on the end of the world … yeah, okay, I get it." He leaned back in his chair, wiping a hand over his jaw as he let his head tilt up.

"Basically, along with the normal worries, she's got a lot to deal with and the hormones are going jack it all up, at least some of the time." Sam shrugged, closing the laptop. "You sure you're gonna be able to cope with this?"

Dean opened his eyes, brows rising. "The alternative being … what?"

"I don't know." Sam looked away uncomfortably. "You're not exactly used to having to be … kind. Gentle. Understanding."

"Thank you for that vote of confidence," Dean said, pushing the chair back from the table and getting to his feet. "Gonna have to get used to it, aren't I?"

Sam looked doubtful. Dean caught the expression, letting out a gusty exhale.

"Look, I know what to expect now. That'll help."

He wasn't about to detail the way he felt when he saw Ellie in distress, not to his brother, not even to reassure Sam about his gentler qualities, he thought with a scowl. Sam'd just have to take it on faith.

* * *

 _ **2.30 p.m.**_

"Crowley had a different technique; I don't know what it was."

Ellie set the coin on the map and lit the candles. The flames stood perfectly upright, burning steadily. She murmured softly in Latin, her eyes closed, drawing her concentration down to a fine-point focus, an image of the identical coin she'd slipped into Meg's pocket.

Standing on either side of the small table, Dean and Sam watched as the coin on the map began to tremble, then slid over the paper, moving first west then south. It moved another inch, jerking over the map's crease, then stopped.

Ellie opened her eyes, her eyes narrowing as she took in the coin's location. "Wow, she moved fast."

Under the coin, the letters _St_ – _is_ were all that showed. The town was against the border of Missouri and Illinois, transecting a large river.

She glanced up. "We need Frank."

"Why?" Sam asked. "It's only a few hours away."

"It's not like an electronic tracking device, Sam," she said, gesturing to the map. "We can't look at the map and drive. If she starts to move while we're on the road, we won't know about it until we stop and check again. Frank can watch the coin and let us know if she's moving and where."

Turning to Dean, she added, "And we need help – as many hunters as you can get hold of. Meg's crafty enough without whatever input she gets from Lucifer. We're going to need a way to get her into the circle and trap her, and it's going to have to be airtight."

Dean nodded, turning away and pulling out his cell. Sam lifted a quizzical brow.

"How do we find Frank?"

"Where's your laptop?" Ellie blew out the candles and put the coin in her pocket, rolling up the map.

* * *

An hour later, they'd packed up and pulled out, Sam's Jeep leading this time, Dean following in the white pickup.

He glanced at her as he straightened the vehicle onto the street. "You'll, uh, tell me if you need to eat, or rest or whatever, right?"

"I'm not an invalid, Dean," she said, a hint of frustration in her voice. "Just had a couple of rough days."

"Sure, yeah," he agreed quickly. He could see she was going to be stubborn about it. "But tell me anyway."

"Pregnancy isn't an illness."

"No, uh, right."

"It's taking me a while to get used to the … um … changes," she added, a hint of truculence colouring her tone. "But I'm fine."

"I know."

"I'm not going to burst into tears in the middle of everything," she said, her voice rising slightly. "Or break. Or faint."

"Uh –"

He heard a noisy exhale from the passenger side of the truck and glanced around.

"I'm scaring you, aren't I?"

"No," he said, a smile quirking one side of his mouth. "Took me by surprise, that's all."

"Mmm."

"You don't have to deal with this stuff by yourself, you know."

She didn't say anything and he slid a sidelong glance at her.

"I – uh – I might not be the most – uh – understanding guy in the world," he said slowly, swallowing. "But I'm here, and I – uh – wanna help."

For once, she didn't grin at him, make some comment about him being sweet or romantic or soft or anything else.

He followed Sam through a sharp right, then a ninety-degree left, accelerating as they came to the long onramp. He risked another sideways glance.

Ellie was leaning back into the corner, between the door and the seat, a small, somewhat wry smile on her lips and lighting her eyes. It wasn't a particularly provocative smile, but it stirred a flush of heat anyway.

He looked back at the road, wondering if every other guy on the planet had to go through this too, or if he'd been singled out for some kind of special torture.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

 _ **9.30 p.m. West Bend, Wisconsin**_

"The coin will move when she does, as long as the candles burn," Ellie said to Frank.

She'd set up the map and candles on the trailer's small square table an hour ago. The coin had returned to St Louis. Switching to a much larger scale map of the city, it'd zigged and zagged around the streets for a few moments, before settling on a warehouse address by the river. They'd waited to make sure it wasn't moving anywhere else, and Dean and Sam had gone outside, using their latest pre-paid phones to send messages to the hunters to meet them in O'Fallon.

"How're you routing the cells?"

With a vague wave of his hand, Frank said, "Through TSAT, some of the older SATCOMs and Chinasat. As well as the usual ground stations, mostly CIA."

Ellie's mouth tucked in at the corners. "That seems reasonably secure."

He snorted, turning away from the table to the narrow kitchen counter and pouring a coffee from the pot.

"We'll need guidance; and it won't only us," she warned him. "There'll be another six, plus or minus, signals as well. You'll be burning up the airwaves."

He shrugged. "Been borrowing some of the T1 capacity while I'm here." He glanced at the window. "Pole's thirty yards thataway so it's hardwired, mostly using the D-channel to hide in."

Ellie nodded. "No one's gonna see the blip of extra usage on that line?"

Shaking his head, he told her, "No, the line reports an even flow across the entire length. No locations using more than any other."

"Nice."

"Ray's software," he said. "No one can track the signals coming from me, Ellie, but it's not gonna take a genius to triangulate positions where they go to the phone SIMs. We've been thinking about a kind of mobile telephone exchange, using rotating chips and codes for each of the phones – so the individual signals can be falsely recording their transmission data."

Ellie thought about that for a moment. "So one call would be reported in … say Arizona, the next in Quebec?"

"Yeah, exactly, although Ray's kinda keen to spread the load," Frank said, with a sharp-edged grin. "It would make tracing source or recipients impossible, no matter how sophisticated the tracking systems they've borrowed are."

Taking off his glasses and pulling a cloth from his pocket, he cleaned the lenses. "It's going to be the only way to prevent the leviathans from being able to target us, we think. Well, aside from hiding in caves and not using modern technology ourselves, I mean."

"Are you ready to put that into place?" she asked.

"Not yet. Another few days and we will be," he said, tucking the cloth back into his pocket and settling his glasses onto his nose. "Ray's tweaking the variables and I've got a few more bugs to get ironed out."

Nodding, Ellie said, "Well, we're going to be moving around a lot this week. I don't think anyone will be able to keep up – and they won't be able to anticipate us. But after that, it's going to be a big priority." She looked at him. "That going to work for you and Ray?"

"I believe so." He glanced down at the map again, his expression sombre. "This plan, to catch the demon, uh, it's not going to be a cakewalk, is it?"

"No," she said, her eyes cutting away to the trailer's door. "Not even close."

"Ray had an idea, uh, for some kind of early warning for demon presence," Frank offered, one shoulder lifting in a diffident shrug.

She looked back at him. "Keying off what?"

"I didn't ask and he didn't say." He shook his head. "I'll tell him to send the preliminary design to you?"

"That'd be good," Ellie said. "Sooner the better."

* * *

 _ **11.00 p.m. Roscoe, Illinois.**_

"I pulled up the plans of the warehouse," Sam said, forking another load of almond chicken onto his plate. "It's been empty for three years. Last tenant was an engine refitting business, but they gutted it when they went belly up."

"We're going to have to look at it first anyway," Ellie said. "If it's the stretch I'm thinking of, there's not going to be an easy way in that isn't pretty conspicuous, even with the river at the back door."

The motel room was redolent with the scents of Chinese take-out; almond chicken, ginger beef and chow mein warring with fried wontons and special fried rice for dominance; the table littered with empty cartons and paper napkins. To one side, Sam's laptop was open, showing the street location of the warehouse along the riverside.

Dean wiped his fingers and picked up his beer. "How're we going to get the circle set up in that place while she's in it?"

"No idea," Ellie said, her head bent over her plate. "Too many variables. We'll know more when we get there."

Over the past few hours, she'd gotten more sleep, conked out in the passenger seat of the pickup. She'd eaten every time they'd stopped. She looked better, Dean thought, watching her from under his brows.

"Will she be able to see you?" Sam asked, pushing back in his chair. "Because of Lucifer?"

"I don't know that either," she admitted, wiping her mouth and glancing at Dean. "You think I should hang back, stay out of it?"

"No," Dean said, setting the bottle down. "We could use it, if we need to."

"A – decoy?" Sam frowned. "Isn't that a little risky?"

"Not if I'm there," he said, leaning forward, elbows propped on the table. "We need to make this work, no matter happens, right?"

Sam glanced at Ellie. "Yeah."

"So, we don't know if you're gonna be visible or not," he continued, his gaze flicking to her. "But we know no one else is on their radar."

"You want to double the traps?" Ellie asked, pushing her plate away and resting her chin on her hand, her eyes narrowing. "It's a waste of holy oil."

"Not if it works," he countered. "If she sees you, thinks you're alone, she might walk into Circle A. If she doesn't, there's Circle B and a bunch of hunters somewhere else."

He straightened and picked up the bottle, swallowing the last mouthful and ignoring the sudden thumping of his pulse at the base of his throat. She wouldn't be alone. He'd be there. Wherever 'there' was. It was the only thing he could think of to counter the possibility Meg would see Ellie, would feel her somehow, know she was there. He wasn't leaving her alone on the sidelines and he was done with putting all their eggs in one basket, or locking the henhouse ... or whatever the goddamned phrase was.

"Sounds like a plan," Ellie said, getting up and collecting the empty cartons.

Dean and Sam picked up the dishes and empty bottles, carrying them to the sink.

"Has everyone responded?" Ellie asked, filling the sink with hot water and looking in the cupboard under it for detergent.

"We got messages from Garth, Dwight, Marcus and Trent – they were waiting anyway," Sam said, taking the detergent from her and handing his brother a dishcloth.

"Got answers from Laney and Moses. They'll be in Peoria by about eight," Dean added, dropping the empty bottles into the trash. "Jeremy can't make it."

"Frank'll keep everyone informed until we get there," Ellie said, stepping back with a raised brow as Sam reached past her to turn off the tap and ease the dirty dishes into the hot, soapy water. "He and Ray might have a better communication setup for us."

Dean grunted noncommittally as he took a clean, wet dish from his brother and started drying. "I thought the levis were using the NSA's listening posts? Or was it the CIA's?"

She nodded. "They've come up with a way around that."

Sam glanced over his shoulder at her. "That I'd like to see."

"Hopefully, if we get through this and we're all still here, you will in a week."

"M'I supposed to wipe off what you don't wash off, Sam?" Dean stared at the dirty plate irritably.

"Give it back." Sam held out his hand for the offending plate. "It's not on the immediate agenda, but you have any ideas on getting Michael out?"

"What?" Ellie turned to look at him.

Dean's mouth compressed to a thin line. He'd been hoping he wouldn't have to tell Ellie about that until after they'd bagged the devil. "Cas told us only Michael can, uh, control the angel army."

"He wants you to get Michael out of the Cage?"

"Well, he wasn't that specific," Dean said, shooting a fast glare at his brother. "He just said Michael had to be – uh –raised."

Ellie looked away. "Getting into the Cage is no picnic."

Sam made an apologetic face at him, ducking his head as Ellie turned back. With an internal eye-roll, Dean wondered how he was gonna sidetrack Ellie's interest in the angel's order.

"Yeah. No."

 _Understatement of the year_.

"You don't have the rings any more."

He hadn't even thought of that, he realised, snatching a wet plate from Sam's hand and tightening his hold when it started to slip. The rings from War, Famine and Pestilence were still in the small leather pouch in his duffel. Death's ring, he'd returned.

"Uh, well, we gotta get Lucifer back in his box first," he said.

* * *

 _ **4.00 p.m. July 3, 2012. Peoria, Illinois**_

"Why here?" Dean looked around the crowded campground when he stopped the pickup.

"Camouflage," Ellie said. "And clutter."

The lightly wooded slope framed a large clearing down to the river, but the open ground wasn't open; it was tightly packed with RVs, camper vans, tents – and people. Vacationers, dressed in shirts and shorts or summer dresses, the most colourful they could get hold of, Dean thought, reaching for his sunglasses, his nose wrinkling unconsciously at the sight. Most of the designated camp sites had their own fire pits and simply built picnic tables. The picnic ground, on the other side of the grounds, had a dozen tables and a several stone-ringed fire places.

Sam's Jeep pulled in behind them. Dean could see his brother's pan of the grounds through the rearview mirror. When he opened the door, the noise hit him – music of every type, loud chatter, yelling of the kids who raced and whooped through the tents and trailers, and somewhere in the middle, the high-pitched squall of a baby who didn't think much of the camping idea. He didn't blame it. He couldn't think of anything less tempting than spending a vacation with a hundred strangers crammed together. The air above the general campground was pale blue with smoke from the barbecuing dinners.

Looking back into the truck at Ellie, he lifted a brow. "Guess no one's gonna overhear us."

"There's that," she agreed, opening her door and climbing out.

There were a couple of free tables, close to where they'd parked and she walked to the pickup's tray, pulling out a cool box of food and setting it on one of them.

* * *

A battered red truck arrived half an hour later, Twist squeezing into the gap between them and a small group of trees. He and Dwight got out, wandering over to the table and helping themselves to the mounds of sandwiches Ellie had set out.

"You gotta fix on that demon?" Dwight asked, tucking his mouthful of pastrami, sweet mustard and onion on rye into one cheek.

Dean nodded. "Down on the river, a warehouse."

"We gotta plan for taking her down this time?"

"Not until we get a good close look at the site," Ellie said, coming up behind him. "We'll take a look at tomorrow."

"So what's the pow-wow about?" the older hunter asked.

"Timing, mostly."

A blatting noise broke through the conversation, and they turned together, along with more than half of the vacationers in the camp ground, to see Garth's Ranchero lurch from the gravel entrance across the grass toward them, smoke curling up from beneath the hood.

"The hell he _do_ to that engine?" Dean muttered to himself, walking toward the hunter and waving his arms. "Stop! Hey! Stop!"

The scrawny hunter hit the brakes, sticking his head out the window. "Hey. Uh, not sure what happened – there was this, um, grinding noise –?"

"Pop the hood," Dean ordered, rolling up his sleeves.

* * *

By dusk, the campground was settling down and Ellie leaned back against the picnic table, stretching her legs out.

Dean was still buried in the engine of Garth's car, occasionally barking out suggestions or swearing indistinctly, Garth scurrying around the vehicle to grab tools from her pickup, hold the light, pass things, and start and stop the engine. Dwight and Twist sat at the other end of the table, playing cards, a pile of matchsticks between them. Trent had driven in an hour ago, and was sitting at the next table, making significant inroads into the remaining sandwiches and talking to Sam.

She looked around as headlights lit up the clearing and dimmed, Marcus' blue Nova bumping over the rough ground. He parked on the other side of Sam's Jeep, and she got to her feet as he got out, brows rising in surprise as a pair of bare, suntanned legs emerged from the passenger side.

"Carol?"

Carol Milson was a few inches shorter than her uncle's height of five-eleven, her cut-off denim shorts and tee shirt fitting tightly on an athletic build. A short crop of blonde hair, the tips scarlet, gave her a startling, somewhat elfin look.

The young woman turned and grinned at her. "Hey, Ellie, long time."

"He rope you in for this?" Ellie hugged the girl, glancing at Marcus. "I thought you were in college?"

"Finished with college. And I wanted to come. I only went to college for Dad," Carol said. "Hunting's more fun."

Ellie made a face. "That's a matter of experience, but never mind."

"That's what I told her too." Marcus' expression matched Ellie's. "She won't listen. Got her father's stubborn streak."

He nodded to Dwight and Twist. "Uh, Carol, you know these two renegades. That's Casper Trent over there, sittin' with Sam Winchester," he said, Trent and Sam getting to their feet and crossing to them.

"Wow, really? _The_ Sam Winchester?" Carol smiled up at him, holding out her hand. Behind Sam, Trent snorted and Marcus rolled his eyes.

"Uh, yeah," Sam said uncomfortably, shaking her hand and looking over her head to his brother.

"And that's Garth Fitzgerald and Dean Winchester," Marcus continued, waving a hand toward the two by the Ford.

"Oh, gee, I've heard a lot about you guys." She looked from Sam over to Dean as he and Garth walked to the tables. "It's so cool to meet you finally."

Dean held up oil-covered hands and nodded to her. "Nice to meet someone who thinks it's cool to meet us."

He turned back to Garth. "This engine's had it, Garth."

"Aww, no, come on," Garth groaned. "Don't say that. She's my baby."

"Well, you better pay your last respects, 'cause you killed her," came the sour answer.

"We the last?" Marcus asked Ellie, glancing around the crowded grounds.

"No, still waiting for Laney and Moses," Ellie told him. "There's more food in the truck, if you're hungry."

"Won't say no to food, hon," he said, following her to the pickup. "Sorry about Carol. Her mom said she's at a loose end and she was worried she might do something stupid."

"She hasn't had much experience, has she?" Ellie asked, opening the cool box and lifting out another foil-wrapped plate.

"Nothing more'n salt'n'burns," Marcus said. "George, he – he thought she'd follow him, didn't realise he wasn't gonna be around long enough to train her properly."

Nodding, she turned back to the table. "We're not sure yet just how much of a liability I'm likely to be, so she can keep me company, worst case."

"What d'you mean?" Marcus lifted the foil from the plate and took a sandwich.

"There's a good chance I'm visible," Ellie told him with a shrug. "Not to most things, but definitely to the archdemons and maybe to Meg."

He looked at her, his expression thoughtful. "Katie had nothing for you?"

"She gave me this," Ellie said, lifting the pendant from under her shirt. "Its effectiveness is limited."

"What about that angel friend of Dean's?"

"He can't do anything," Ellie said. "Not sure how to handle this yet, but it might work in our favour with Meg."

"I wouldn't be unhappy, both of you girls staying out of the action," he said, glancing around. "We got enough."

Ellie nodded. "Well, we'll see how we go."

She moved aside as Carol came up to the table, taking a sandwich and returning to the other table to sit with Sam and Trent. The girl might be a hindrance, but no more than she would if Meg or Lucifer could sense her presence – or the archdemons could feel her and came looking, she thought with an internal grimace. She would lead them right to the devil.

"Hey," Dean said from behind her. Turning, she saw him standing a couple of feet away, wiping his hands on a rag. "Everyone here?"

"Laney and Moses still to come," she said, sitting on the edge of the table. "Garth's car not worth saving?"

"Sure," he said, tucking the rag into his back pocket and sitting next to her. "If he wants to get the engine completely rebuilt, along with most of the moving parts on the rest. It was built in '78, an' I don't think he's replaced anything. Everything I looked at is officially an antique."

His gaze shifted to the next table. "The blonde's Marcus' – niece? How old is she?"

"Carol." She nodded. "She's twenty-two."

"The hell he drag her along for?"

"He didn't have a choice," she said. "Her mother asked him."

"Always a choice," he retorted, turning back to her. "What're we gonna do with her?"

"Well, chances are pretty good I'll have to hang back, probably a long way," she said, waving a hand vaguely. "She can stick around here, handle comms."

"Wait a minute, I don't –"

He stopped as another set of headlights washed over them, a big, black pickup growling as it inched past the picnic tables and parked next to the Nova.

"Alright," Ellie said, pushing off the table at the sounds of the truck's doors opening and closing. "We're all here."

Dean got to his feet. Ellie noticed he stood behind her as Laney Pike rounded the end of the Nova, striding over to them.

Five foot three inches and with an overflowing hourglass figure, Laney's button-through sleeveless shirt strained over her chest and the skin-tight denim jeans gave a good impression of being painted on. Shoulder-length blonde hair tumbled in waves and curls around her face, framing brown eyes, a pert nose and a wide smile.

Her partner, Moses Langton, walked unhurriedly in her wake, six foot four and barn-wide across the shoulders and chest. He grinned at them over Laney's head, coming to a stop behind her as she hugged Ellie, his teeth white against ebony skin.

"Damn, it's been a long time, hon! Where've you been keeping yourself?" Laney said against Ellie's ear. She stepped back suddenly, her brows rising and mouth dropping open. "Oh, my god, Ellie! You're pregnant!?"

Ellie stared at her. "How'd you know that?"

"Sweetie, you know I got a sixth sense for that kind of thing," Laney said, her gaze sliding to Dean, lips quirking into a knowing smile. "You finally figured it out, eh?"

Ellie heard him clear his throat and mumble, "Uh, yeah, guess so."

"Come on," Laney said, grabbing Ellie's wrist and tugging her back toward the black pickup. "Gimme _all_ the juicy details before we have to get on with business, okay?"

Glancing back at Dean over her shoulder, Ellie made a face.

Moses laughed, one huge hand thumping down on Dean's shoulder. "Don't fight it, Ellie; our Laney, she don't take no for an answer."

* * *

Dean looked around the crowded table. Eight men and three women were squeezed in together, their faces lit by the bright glow of the pressure lantern. He had their attention, he thought, wondering where the hell to start.

"Most of you remember what happened the last time the devil got topside," he said, glancing at his brother. "Bad news is, he's out again."

There was a disbelieving murmur around the table and he shook his head. "He doesn't have a vessel and he's, uh, contained, for the moment in the meatsuit of a demon."

"How t'hell that happen?" Laney asked.

"He rode out of the Cage in an empty vessel," Ellie told her, her voice sharp. "He abandoned the vessel for an angel's body and a Watcher transferred him from the angel to the demon to be able to trap him in a circle of holy oil."

"A Watcher? Holy oil?" Laney's brows rose. "Thought they were bedtime stories?"

"No."

Dean looked from Laney to Ellie, and nodded to Sam. His brother took out the map of the industrial area in St Louis and pushed it across the table to him.

"We tracked her to here," Dean said. "She's holed up in a warehouse on the river."

The hunters leaned forward, looking at the map. It was a large-scale street map, satellite-view, showing the riverside buildings in clear focus. The area was only patchily occupied, parked cars and river traffic showing the active businesses.

"The warehouse is on the river, access road right in front. It's empty, but the fuel depot and the metal yard to either side are both occupied," he said. Sam pulled out another printout, this one of the warehouse floor plan.

"Going on the plans, there'll be two main areas we have to cover, plus exits."

"Anyone with her?" Laney asked, her gaze flicking across the table to Ellie.

"Not that we know of," Ellie said.

"This is a one-shot deal," Dean continued. "She has to be in the circle and the holy oil has to be lit to hold her. It's not gonna be easy. She's been around a long time and the devil's riding with her."

"We can't send her back to Hell, let 'em fight it out?" Trent asked, scratching his jaw as he stared at the floor plan.

"No." Ellie looked around the table. "If the archdemons get hold of Lucifer, they'll have the power between them to challenge Heaven, and right now, Heaven's not in a position to defeat them."

"You're talking about a war?" Marcus asked, his brows drawing together. "Here?"

"That's, uh, a possibility," Sam said.

Looking at their faces, Dean realised none of them had really had the firsthand experience of dealing with angels and demons messing about with their lives. Carol's mouth was open as her gaze flicked around the table; Garth'd turned paler than usual; Twist was staring at his hands, fiddling with the deck of cards.

"Might not come to that, we do our job right," Dean continued. "We haven't eyeballed the place yet, so we got nothing solid."

He didn't want to be doing this. Ellie was better at it, the whole planning and explaining side of things. He just wanted to kill the sonofabitch and have it over.

"Moses, you and me'll check out the building tomorrow."

Laney's partner nodded, his expression thoughtful.

"Once we know what it looks like, we'll meet at the Overlook in O'Fallon; go through who does what," Dean finished.

The back of his neck was prickling like a bitch, every time he considered leaving Ellie somewhere on the sidelines. Visible – and alone – was not sitting well with him, no matter what the risks were. It wasn't just that he needed to be able to see her. She was good at this stuff – traps and outthinking the enemy and being able to think around problems as they arose – and he didn't want to regret not having her there if Meg proved more of a handful than they were figuring on.

Dwight scratched his head. "Ah, just goin' back to the war part, Dean. The Fallen, they been runnin' Hell for a long time now, what makes you think they're aiming to start a war?"

Dean glanced at the woman beside him, suddenly getting why she'd sometimes kept a lot of the information she'd had to herself. Right now, there was just too much to be able to sum up easily or deliver quickly.

"Until now, Lucifer had the control over Hell," Ellie said, taking his cue without looking at him. "And over the archdemons. He's weakened. It's possible he's not even precisely angel or demon right now. And they know it. The Watcher we spoke to thinks they're searching for him to put a leash on him, control him somehow so they can do what they've been waiting to do since he was first imprisoned."

"That would be?" Moses asked.

"Open the gates. Take over," Dean cut in, waving a hand around. "Get rid of us."

Marcus' expression was sceptical. "Pain's demon meat and drink. Hard to take over the earth with no humans to possess and torment?"

Ellie shook her head. "The Fallen – Lucifer – they're angels. They're not worried if demons are left in Hell or if they're all wiped out along with humankind. They just want to have the place to themselves."

"That all?" Twist grimaced, slamming the cards on the table. "Just total annihilation?"

"That's about the ballpark, yeah," Dean said. "Look, no one has to be here, alright? The job sucks and no one's gonna think any worse of anyone if they figure it's not their problem."

"I don't know about anyone else," Laney said coldly. "But I got two little girls I want to have a world to grow up in, and this seems to me to be very much my problem. I'm in."

Dwight nodded in agreement, so did Moses. On the other end of the table, Twist heaved a sigh and shrugged. Marcus gave a sharp nod as he looked at his niece.

"Yeah, this is what we do," Trent murmured.

Garth looked at the faces around him. "Uh, oh, I'm in, but I have a question?"

Dean glanced at his watch and cocked a brow at him.

"I kind of get how no one could see Lucifer, when he was in an angel," Garth said. "But wouldn't he be visible in a demon? What if the – uh – archdemons already know where he is?"

"Meg's warded, and we think there's a possibility she's nephilim," Sam answered. "We told her the holy fire would keep her hidden, but she wasn't worried about that. She had to have some other solution in mind."

He glanced at Ellie, who shrugged.

"We're watching for demon sign twenty-four-seven," he added. "We'll have some notice if anyone except us is getting close to her."

"Okey-dokey." Garth nodded agreeably. "Um, is there any chance I can get a ride with someone?"

* * *

"Where're the girls?" Ellie asked, taking the dishes from Laney and stacking them in the back of the pickup.

"Left them with Moses' mom," Laney said. "They're eating peach cream pie and lazin' around the pool in LA."

"Sounds like the life," Dean said as he came up with the gear bag and set into the back.

"Oh, they think so," Laney said with a laugh. "You got any of those custom-made rounds left for me?"

"Yeah." He unzipped the bag, and felt around inside for the square boxes.

"I'm going to grab a set of those blueprints from Sam before he heads for the motel," Ellie said, walking around the rear of the truck.

Dean nodded, fingers finally locating the extra ammunition.

"Here," he said, handing two boxes to Laney. "You carry a nine millimetre, don't you?"

She nodded, taking them from him. "Ellie was saying she thinks she's gonna be visible to those archdemons, somehow."

Dean zipped up the bag. "Yeah, she might be."

"If that demon figured out some kind of warding against them, maybe she can go in," Laney said. "This is her kind of thing, you know."

"I know." He gave her an irritated look. "You wanna convince her of that, be my guest. I don't want her sitting four miles away on her own."

"I tried that already." She shrugged. "She's worried about endangering everyone. Said she was attractin' demons while you were in North Dakota? Had a run-in with one in Egypt too."

So there had been something in Egypt. He stared at the ground. "Looked that way."

"You know, Dean, even back in '07, in Michigan, there was something between you and Ellie," Laney said, leaning against the side of the truck. "I got the feeling I was treadin' on her toes."

The bar returned to his mind's eye. He remembered the feeling of relief at the job being over, the pleasant buzz of the beer and the feel of Laney's hand down his thigh. There'd been something with Ellie, but he hadn't known what it was, hadn't gotten any signs from her. He'd followed her to the parking lot when she'd left, caught up to her at her truck. She'd told him she wanted to get on the road. He'd watched her go.

He shook his head. "You weren't."

"Yeah, well, I knew her better then than you did," Laney added, her expression unconvinced.

"You goin' somewhere with this?" he asked. _What good was of thinking about the might've-beens? Now?_

"Most of the time it's hard to tell what Ellie's thinking. Or feeling," Laney said.

"You think?"

"Doesn't mean she's always right."

He turned to look at her.

"She's sneaky as a snake in the grass, and she thinks around corners," Laney said. "I'll bet she can outthink that demon."

"No argument," he said, his mouth tucking in at Laney's description. He didn't think Ellie would take offence at it.

"All you gotta do is convince her."

He let out a frustrated exhale. "Yeah. That's all."

* * *

 _ **10.03 p.m. Empress Motel, Peoria, Illinois**_

" _They're still a few around Memphis and Pittsburgh,"_ Ray's voice sounded thin and distant over the speaker. _"But the big masses have all gone again."_

"Any fluctuations that seem stronger than the rest?" Ellie asked, her lip caught between her teeth.

" _No. Nothing but the usual thunderstorms and EMF spikes and they're within the expected range."_

"Did you have any luck getting into the current TOMS satellite uplinks?"

" _Some,"_ Ray said, the reservation in his voice audible. _"It's not comprehensive. The software isn't good."_

"Enough to verify the EMF and atmospheric anomalies?"

" _Yeah, in most cases."_ There was a pause and static filled the line. _"There's no sign of anything more powerful than a lower-class demon anywhere on the continent."_

"What about the last twenty-four hours of the warehouse?"

" _Target is shown in each of the still captures,"_ Ray said. _"Not stationary. Moving from one part of the structure to another. I'm only using the available low-orbit satellites and they're not tasked for the job, but you definitely have a heat source in that warehouse and it's been consistent for the last two days."_

"So she didn't find the coin and just leave it there?" Sam asked, leaning closer to the phone.

" _Doesn't look like it,"_ Ray replied. _"The coin wouldn't generate a thermal signature and the subject has moved around, within the structure."_

"Why's she hanging around there?" Dean asked, his annoyance tangible. "What's she waiting for?"

"Ray, can you keep eyes on the place? If anything changes, we'll need to know." Ellie ignored the interjection.

" _Only once every twelve hours, Ellie, you know that."_ For a moment the line cleared to crystal clarity and they heard the rapid clicks of typing at the other end. _"There're no geostationary satellites in range and assigning one would draw a lot of attention."_

Sam glanced across the table at Ellie. Things happened a lot faster than every twelve hours.

"We'll have to make do with that," Ellie said, frustration an edge along her voice. "Thanks."

" _Not a problem,"_ Ray said. _"Ellie? Either Frank or I'll call you from here on, okay? We can weird the tracking from this end but I haven't finished the virtual exchange for yours yet."_

"Got that," Ellie said. "Just yell if anything changes."

" _Will do."_ The line clicked out and Ellie reached out to end the call.

"So – what?" Dean looked at her. "They've given up?"

Her gaze was fixed to the phone, the familiar small crease between her brows. "Or, they know exactly where she is and they don't need to search any more."

"Wouldn't they've just taken her then?" Sam asked. "She hasn't moved."

Dean got to his feet, walking to the kitchen and pulling two beers from the fridge. His face was screwed up, the look in his eyes distant. "Sam, what'd Meg say about causes? When she decided to help with Crowley?"

Sam blinked at the question. He remembered the conversation, the demon trying to convince them their goals were the same, but he couldn't recall the details. "Uh, something about a reason to get up in the morning?"

Taking the beer from his brother, he shrugged as Dean's eyes rolled. "I can't remember much more than that."

"She said something about Lucifer," Dean said, dropping into his chair and twisting the top off the bottle. "How – uh – he'd been her cause –?"

Abruptly, Sam remembered. _You find a cause, and you serve it. Give yourself over, and it orders your life. Lucifer and Yellow Eyes – their mission was it for me._

"Yeah, Lucifer and Yellow Eyes." His brow furrowed. "She said something about things changing over time and how it was Crowley who was the problem?"

"Right," Dean said. "Only now, Crowley's gone and the devil's back in the game."

Ellie turned to look at him. "She isn't dumb enough to think the archdemons are going to forgive and forget, is she?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe she's just hiding out, trying to figure out something that'll work."

Sam looked at his watch. "You'll know tomorrow, one way or the other," he said. "We should be working out who's doing what."

With an impatient exhale, Dean nodded, turning back to the table. He leaned over the warehouse's blueprint. "Two floors. Four ways in and out."

"Four teams," Ellie said, gesturing to the plan. "Twist, Dwight and Laney take the ground floor east, blocking the door to the rear lot and river. Moses, Marcus and Garth can take the ground floor west. The stairs are in the middle and we can put a circle right at their base, drive her into it if we need to."

Looking at the drawing of the building, with its wide-open lower floor, Sam thought about the people she'd chosen and couldn't argue. Twist and Dwight were seasoned and nerve-less, their strength more than compensated for Laney's smaller, but faster frame. On the other side of the circle, Moses and Marcus would be able to make up for any shortcomings Garth presented.

He glanced up at his brother, watching Dean consider the possibilities and probabilities. He wasn't surprised when Dean nodded.

"That's the exit she'd bolt for, if we give her the chance." Ellie tapped a finger on the postern door, set into the middle of the southern wall. "Sam, you and Trent could keep Carol with you, handle comms and sit on that?"

"You want me to baby-sit?" Sam asked, his gaze shooting to Dean. "What's wrong with Trent?"

She lifted a brow. "I want to make sure someone who knows exactly what the stakes are is handling the comms and the exit Meg's mostly likely to go for," she said mildly. "I also want to make sure Marcus' niece is as protected as we can make her. Trent can baby-sit, if you'd prefer to take point there."

Staring down at the plan, Sam searched for a good argument against. Dean spread his hands out apologetically.

"Sorry, man, but she's right," he said. "You're a better shot than the others and you got that whole chivalry thing going on."

"You're a better shot than I am," Sam retorted. "Why don't you handle comms and the girl?"

"Haven't got your patience or that techno-know-how," Dean answered flippantly. He looked down at Ellie. "Uh, that mean it's you and me taking the top floor?"

"Yeah." She glanced up at him with a wry grimace. "You're right. The archdemons aren't looking any more. Whether she's made a deal or they've seen through her warding, it doesn't matter. We're on the clock now and we have to get this wrapped up fast."

"I'm okay with that," Dean said.

"Just the two of you? What if Meg gets past?" Sam asked. "Lucifer might still see you, even if the archdemons don't."

"Yeah. Look at this," Ellie said, pushing the floorplan to one side as she drew out the aerial shot from beneath it.

Both men leaned over the table, Sam reaching for the large magnifying glass. He moved it over the structure Ellie was pointing at, and the details leapt out.

"A gantry of some kind?" he asked, lifting the glass off the paper.

"Crane," Ellie told him. "For loading and unloading to the river. We can get in without going in through the ground floor, if it's still there. That'll be the support structure. There."

Dean frowned down at the image, his fingertip tracing a section of the roof. "Ray said she's been moving around in there."

"If we can get in through the top floor, we could block her exit and either lead or drive her down?" she said, her gaze lifting and moving from Dean to Sam. "If Lucifer does give Meg a heads-up because he can sense me, we can still work the decoy plan? I run, you follow?"

Sam huffed a sharp exhale. The upper floor was half the size of the lower. It would only need two people to cover the width, so long as they were good. He moved the glass over the floorplan. There was an entry door where the loading arm was positioned. It was smaller than a yard in either direction. With the arm in place, he had a feeling he wouldn't fit through it. Shooting a look at his brother, he wasn't sure Dean would either, but they'd know that for sure when they a chance to look at it.

Didn't matter, he told himself. He'd still be baby-sitting.

* * *

 _ **11.00 p.m.**_

Dean stretched out on the bed, watching Ellie move around the room, checking their gear. Naked, her hair loose; a wildfire down her back as it caught the light from the single lamp, the sight was creating the usual havoc with his senses. He tried to ignore the insistent clamour. There were a couple of things he wanted to ask.

She was starting to show a little, her stomach curving outward now, low down, instead of the flat muscles he was used to seeing. The changes were gradual, sneaking up on them both. He'd heard her frustrated muttering that morning when her jeans were too tight for comfort. She'd pulled them off and dragged out a pair of cotton pants with an elasticised waist instead.

With a final glance around the room, she turned off the light, sliding into the bed next to him. He moved his arm as she wriggled close, settling her head against the hollow of his shoulder.

"Hey," he said softly.

She looked up at him, her half-smile disappearing as she caught his expression. "Hey."

Leaning back, she shifted higher, supporting herself on her elbow to look into his face, her thigh sliding over his for balance.

"What?"

"You put Sam outta harm's way to make sure I don't get distracted?" he asked.

She raised a brow. "You think he's out of harm's way?"

Shaking her head and not waiting for answer, she continued, "If Meg breaks, she'll take the path she thinks has the least resistance and that won't be to either of the main roller doors. Sam knows Meg. He won't underestimate her and he won't hesitate. Carol's with him because he'll do his best to protect her."

It sounded like a reason, he thought, glancing away.

"You don't believe me?" Ellie asked.

"There's more crap you don't tell me," he said. "than there's stuff you do,"

"A 'for instance'?"

Twisting toward her, his hand slid down from her breastbone, down into the valley between her breasts, searching for the small vertical scar that lay there.

When he'd seen it – felt it – the first time, he'd wondered about it. It lay right over her heart. He'd seen a lot of new scars, when they'd made love in Bobby's spare bedroom. Had wanted to know about them. But at the time, he'd wanted to catch up on all the time they'd missed more.

He found it, stroking down with his fingertip, looking into her eyes.

"The Watcher told me about this," he said, his voice only just above a whisper. "Told me you did it to talk to God."

* * *

Ellie looked away, her mouth curling down. _Goddamned i_ _nterfering Watcher_.

She drew in a deep breath. There were several good reasons she hadn't told him about that. It'd been a reckless thing to do, memorable in a period of reckless behaviour and something she looked back on with a mix of disbelief and vaguely guilty shame. She didn't remember anything about the time she'd been clinically dead, not from the moment the pain had infused every cell to the moment she'd opened her eyes – apparently a day later – to find Penemue leaning over her, his expression extremely pissed.

"Then you know all about it," she said lightly, glancing away.

"No." Dean lifted his hand, curling his fingers around her jaw. They tightened as he drew her back to look at him. "No, I don't. But I want to."

In the uncertain and diffused light, filtering in through the thin curtains from the motel's parking lot, most of his face was in shadow. She sighed as he released her.

"I didn't get the rest of the prophecy from Patrick until it was too late. Sam'd let the devil out and I'd left and I didn't know what the two of you were doing. It gave the detail about Lilith and it - it said the Righteous Man would end it – and die."

"Yeah … and?" he asked. She could see his brows, pulling together with the question. Did he really think she would've left it at that, she wondered?

"And I couldn't think of any other way to change it," she said, her tone defensive. "I had good reason to think he'd listen. He'd intervened before for me – and for you."

He looked down at the little scar. "And if – uh – he decided not to, this time?"

"Then it wouldn't have mattered, would it?"

"Why would you think that?" His hand was on her hip, fingers biting in.

Dropping her gaze, Ellie didn't know what he wanted from her; what she was supposed to say. That it'd been a dumb idea? That if he'd died, saving the world in an old boneyard, she hadn't been able to see a point to carrying on? The unsettling thoughts weren't new, but she'd never had to expose them before. She shifted against him unconsciously and his arm tightened around her back, blocking her attempt to move away.

"Because it was true," she said finally, giving in with a shrug. It hadn't been a suicide attempt, although that wouldn't've mattered if it'd failed.

"I wasn't trying to – it wasn't an attempt to –" She shook her head, drawing in a deep breath. Penemue'd believed her to be in despair, outraged she'd throw away her life for the man beside her. She hadn't been able to explain her conviction to him, either.

"I just didn't see a downside."

His face screwed up. "Now, you're scaring me."

Shaking her head, Ellie said, "At the time, it was –"

 _The only thing I could do_ , she thought. She couldn't _not_ do anything and she'd had no way of finding him in time, no way to warn him about what'd been foreseen.

"I couldn't find you, couldn't even get a message to you, Dean –" she said, lifting her chin and looking at him. "And it worked."

"What happened?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I woke up and Penemue was cursing a blue streak at me, and I didn't remember anything. Didn't even know if it'd worked."

"He brought you back."

"Yeah, but that might've been the extent of it," she said. "It wasn't until later, a lot later, I found out he brought Cas back – to save you, and Bobby."

His indrawn breath was harsh. "Y'know, I thought you were too smart to make deals."

"I don't think I made a deal," she said.

"But you don't know," he pressed her.

"No."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "When we were talking about – uh, you know – that time?"

 _It's something that happened – something – uh – I didn't know about. It – look – I might not need to – uh – know about – everything, but not knowing the big things–?_

It was a big thing, she supposed, but she hadn't even thought about it when he'd insisted on answers about what she'd done in Hell.

"Because it worked," she said, frowning. "Because I didn't know what you would think about it. Because it never came up."

The truth, but not the whole truth.

"Because, afterwards, when I thought about it, I – it was hard to know up from down. There – there was a long time when I thought – I – um – thought what I felt wasn't the way you felt."

He turned his head, a long exhale feathering over her shoulder. "Yeah. Been there, done that."

Ellie wriggled upright, drawing her legs up. "Look, I know I don't share much –"

He snorted and she flicked her hand at his shoulder.

"– but it's not deliberate. I'm not trying to hide things. Mostly, I don't think of it – I mean, sometimes I'm trying not to think about things – or it just doesn't seem like it matters that much –"

"C'mon," Dean said, pushing back at the pillows behind him to sit up till they were eye-level again. "Okay, I get that, I really do, but this is different. You did it because of me. For me. I – you didn't think I needed to know about that?"

"So you could add another batch of guilt to your load?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.

"That's – no, I'm not –"

"Sure you are," she said, smiling slightly as she cut him off. "I did it for you. I couldn't leave it to play out the way it was supposed to. And I could've died trying to change things."

She watched him tuck his chin to his chest. "I did it because I love you. That's all."

He sucked in a deep breath. "I know."

"I told you, Dean," she said, her eyes searching his as he lifted his head. "You want to know anything? Ask me. I'll tell you. Just don't – don't expect to change the habits of a lifetime."

"I don't like to – uh – pry."

The discomfort in his face surprised a smile from her. "That doesn't leave us much room, does it?"

He seemed to relax, reaching out and pulling her close. "How 'bout if, uh, I try to ask … and you try to, uh, tell me stuff?"

It would work about as well as any compromise, she thought. She hadn't lied. A lot of the time what she'd done, the things that'd happened in her life, were analysed and filed away, closed and locked up and she didn't revisit them. He did the same thing, in many cases. Not necessarily the analysis part.

"Sure, we can try that."

The digital radio clock on the nightstand showed 11:34 and she slid her hand down over his chest, hearing his indrawn breath.

"Uh, Ellie …" He caught her hand and held it. "One more thing."

She waited, watching as his gaze cut away, his lips pursing in that familiar mix of frustration and uncertainty, too clearly showing his ambivalence about whatever it was he thought he needed to know.

"Dean – whatever it is, just ask," she said. "Okay?"

"Yeah." He looked back at her, the lack of enthusiasm apparent on his face. "Uh, yeah. Were you and, uh, Penemue …?"

"Were we together?" she asked, trying to hide her surprise at the question.

He nodded, his fingers tightening around hers, that reaction as telling as the question had been. In the six years they'd known each other, she'd only seen a couple of brief flashes of what might've been jealousy, there and gone and forgotten about.

"He's a little on the old side for me, Dean," she said dryly. His tension at the airport came back to her. She'd thought that'd been from the delays, from the side trip to the monastery. Obviously, there'd been something else.

"No. We weren't," she added, when he didn't smile or respond. "We worked together for a while. I told you about that?"

He nodded.

"He –" she hesitated, remembering their disagreements over the man beside her. "– we had a bit of a falling out. He couldn't understand why I would choose you over the fate of the world."

* * *

He didn't understand that himself, Dean thought, blithely ignoring the certainty he'd do the same thing for her – and had already done it for his brother.

It was another reference to something that had happened in her life he didn't really understand. He had the feeling he could ask questions all night and still not get the whole picture.

"He, uh, seemed angry, when he told me what you did," he said. Another thing he'd thought he wanted to know that was gonna haunt his sleep. He should've learned by now.

"He probably was." She closed her eyes, leaning her temple against his shoulder. "He didn't believe it would work. He didn't think it was worth the price and he thought I was giving up."

 _I was surprised that God even listened. He hasn't been listening, really, for a long time._

He heard the Watcher's voice again in his mind, and picked up the self-mockery in the man's tone this time. An angel, not believing in his Father. No wonder he'd sounded pissed.

"Is that why you've been distracted, Dean?" Ellie asked. "Because you thought there was something between him and me?"

"I don't know." He tried to shrug it off, his gaze involuntarily cutting away at the difficulty of admitting to it. _She's supposed to tell you all her private secrets and you can't even admit to feeling jealous_? "Yeah. I guess."

"You've never worried about that before," she said softly, and he made himself look back at her.

"Well, that's not –" he hesitated, feeling the edge of an abyss crumbing under his feet. "That's not exactly true."

He'd surprised her, he could tell. She didn't respond, but her eyes'd widened.

"Not that you've, uh, given me much to worry about," he said, shifting restively, feeling her hand close around his.

"But, uh, yeah, there've been a couple of times I wondered … and I don't know why I thought – at the airport, y'know – I saw you, coming out of the exit gate, and it was like – there you were, safe and – and, uh, in one piece – and you looked tired, but you were – uh, beautiful – y'know? Then he came out after you – and – he, uh, looked like some kind of damned rock star –"

There was a short, muffled snort of laughter against his shoulder, and he frowned at her. "What's so funny about that?"

"Nothing." She shook her head. "I thought he looked like a rock star too."

"Yeah, well …" He pulled in a deep breath, the sense of the abyss still lurking at the back of his mind. He couldn't describe the feeling. Couldn't find the words to explain it.

"I – I was – so fucking glad to see you, and you – uh, you smiled at him and I –"

The words dried up and he shrugged helplessly, not sure what he'd thought when he'd seen that. He remembered how he'd felt.

Ellie's exhale whispered across his skin. "He was an angel for millennia, and he's been on earth for three thousand years, Dean – and I asked him to help."

"Yeah." He heard the flatness in his voice and cleared his throat. "Uh, I know."

Quite abruptly, he realised he didn't want to talk about it any more. Or think about it. He'd been a dick. He got that. He wanted it to be over. Releasing Ellie's hand, he slid his up her thigh.

"No," Ellie said, capturing his hand on her hip and holding it in place.

"No?"

"No. You don't get to start a conversation like this and then just pull the plug whenever it gets too hard," she clarified.

He kept his eyes on his hand, under hers. "Alright, what do you want me to say?"

That hadn't been what he'd meant to say and he felt her twitch, knew she was going to pull away, adding hurriedly, "Wait – okay? I'm sorry. That came out wrong."

She looked at him, her expression wary. "Yeah, it really did."

Fuck, he thought. He didn't know why he'd gotten bent out of shape by the way the Watcher'd talked about her. He didn't know why he'd let it distract him from the job they'd had to do – or why he hadn't been able to control the impulse to protect his brother – or why he hadn't dealt with fucking up their chance of containing the devil. It'd been one thing after another.

"I –" he started, and suddenly the words came out in a rush, before he even knew what he was going to say. "I wanted – uh – want – to be the one who knows about you."

It sounded a lot worse out loud than he'd thought it would. "Dumb, huh?"

"You were jealous?"

He let out his breath. "It might've been something in the, uh, general vicinity of – the ballpark, of, uh – you know."

"You were," Ellie said, her eyes widening.

"You about done with this?" he asked, squirming against the covers.

"Not even close," she said, her mouth quirking to one side. "Pen doesn't like airports any better than you do. He was out of his comfort zone."

He blew out a noncommittal exhale and shrugged.

"And for the record?" Ellie continued, sliding closer. "You know more about me than anyone else."

"Doesn't feel like that," he muttered, under his breath.

"Maybe not," she agreed. "But we're not in a rush, are we? We've got time. The rest of our lives?" she asked, taking his hand and resting it over her stomach.

He looked down at his hand, feeling the curve under it. "The way things are going, the rest of our lives might not be that long."

She smiled. "Good point."

Rolling onto his shoulder, he said, "You can't leave me in the dark."

"I'm not trying to do that." She sighed, settling down against him again, wrapping her arm around him. "Mostly, things happen and once they're over, I don't really look at them again. I mean, you do it too."

"Yeah," he agreed reluctantly. He did. "You still know more about me than I do about you."

Wrinkling her nose at him, she said, "Dean – I ask."

He huffed. "I've asked," he said. "You change the subject."

She snorted. "Not always."

"Usually."

"Alright," she said. "You ask, and I'll tell you."

"Not the summarised version, Ellie," he warned her softly. She smiled wryly.

"No, not the summarised version," she agreed.

* * *

 _ **9 a.m. July 4, 2012**_.

The little convoy got on the road, splitting up as they left the city to take different routes to St Louis. In the white pickup, Dean checked them off as they pulled onto the street in front of him; Carol in the passenger seat of Sam's Jeep, Twist and Dwight in Twist's truck, Garth riding shotgun in Marcus' Nova. Trent in his four-wheel drive and Moses and Laney in the black four wheel drive pickup.

Dean watched his brother turn west, as he kept straight on. He was a little surprised to find that he wasn't particularly worried about them splitting up. He felt Ellie's glance and looked over at her.

"No twinges?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head. "No, I can concentrate on what we're doing, not worry about him."

He smiled a little at the memory of his brother's expression when they'd met up outside the motel, watching Carol get out of Marcus' truck and walk across the car park. The girl wasn't an airhead and at least his brother didn't have to put with Garth for the ride. "And I think he's going to prefer the company he's got now."

The phone rang and Ellie picked it up. She listened for a few minutes and closed it again.

"She's still in St Louis."

"You think she's meeting someone there?"

"Yeah, that would be my guess." Ellie looked out the window. "The question is who?"

Dean exhaled noisily. "Too many contenders."

* * *

 _ **11.00 a.m. R-116, Illinois**_

Sam glanced at the young woman sitting next to him. The silence had stretched out quite a bit and he still couldn't think of anything to say.

Carol turned to look at him. "Ellie said you went to college?"

 _College_ , he thought, relaxing slightly. "Uh, yeah, did four years at Stanford."

"What were you aiming for?"

"Law degree."

"Really?" She smiled. "Doesn't fit in with hunting."

"No, I was getting out."

"Oh."

He decided to change the direction before it got too close to what he couldn't talk about. "What were you studying?"

"Uh, got a Bachelor's in Science. My dad wanted me to get a medical degree. Figured it would be useful to have a doctor in the family." She shook her head.

"You didn't, uh, want to be a doctor?"

"Sure, it would've been okay. A lot of years training and all that."

"What happened?"

"He died. My mom wanted me to keep going with pre-med, but I couldn't see the point. So I left college and started hunting with Uncle Marcus." She looked at him, seeing the wrinkles in his forehead. "It's okay. I mean it's practically what happens to everyone, isn't it?"

 _Yeah, pretty much_ , he thought tiredly. "I'm sorry about your dad."

"Thanks."

"So now you're, uh, hunting with Marcus all the time?"

"Well, I just got back from college. He's trying his best to push me into doing something else. I just don't know what else to do."

Sam looked at her. "There are a million better things to do than this."

She shrugged. "Mmmm … yeah, that's what everyone keeps telling me."

"They're right." Sam heard his voice hardening. _Geez, tone it down_ , he told himself.

"You, uh, could do anything. You could have a normal life," he added more moderately.

"You didn't," she said.

"That was different."

He was surprised when she laughed. "Yeah, for everyone else, it's always different."

"I wanted to get out." His fingers tightened on the wheel. "The girl I wanted to marry was murdered so that I didn't get out."

He hadn't meant to say it, hadn't meant for it to come out so - so _brutally_. He kept his eyes on the road, aware he was straining to hear her reaction, the silence welling up in the interior of the car like a slow artesian spring.

"I'm sorry," she said finally. "I didn't mean to –"

"You weren't." He shook his head. "It's just that I really wanted out. And you could still get out, before the life brings you so many enemies it's impossible to leave."

He thought of his brother, almost out, then dragged back in because he couldn't protect the people he was with. Maybe it was different now, but he could still see Dean's face, twisted in the agony of not knowing how to keep Lisa and Ben safe, not knowing how to protect them from his past, from everything that haunted him. They'd been civilians, not knowing what to expect and he thought it'd made Dean's rejection of a normal life that much worse. Jess' death had been seven years ago, and he still felt the guilt. It didn't matter she'd been chosen to push him back into hunting, before he'd met her, before he'd fallen in love with her – if it hadn't been for him, she'd be alive now.

Carol was silent, looking out through the windshield, watching the ribbon of road in front of them.

The shrill ringtone broke through the quiet in the vehicle and he pulled it from his coat pocket quickly, listening to Frank's instructions. When the call ended, he scanned the road for the next exit sign. They could come into St Louis from the west, rather than south as he'd planned.

"Was that Frank?" She turned to him, eyebrow lifted questioningly.

"Yeah. We're meeting at a motel. Dean, Moses and Ellie are scouting the building, and we'll go in after dark to trap Meg."

* * *

 _ **1.00 p.m. St Louis, Missouri**_

Adjusting the earpiece tucked into her left ear, Ellie lay along the narrow catwalk that ringed the top of the huge fuel tank.

" _You in position?"_ Dean's voice said through the comms set.

"Yeah," she responded in a low voice, touching the mike that lay flat against her throat. "Nothing moving over there."

She was forty feet from the ground, almost three hundred yards from the warehouse. Between the tank and the empty building in front of her, scraggling saplings and thick shrubs covered the open ground. Beyond them, an unkempt gravel parking lot backed onto the river's edge, the scent of mudbanks and spilled diesel wafting occasionally to her in the breathless heat.

Within the line of stunted undergrowth, and close to the water's edge, she picked out Dean and Moses, crabbing their way slowly to the jetty that belonged to the warehouse. Both wore mixed camouflage fatigues, blending in with the drab surroundings.

She tightened the focus on the military Bird glasses. "About thirty yards and you'll be directly behind the warehouse."

" _Right."_

Shifting her field of view, Ellie refocussed on the building. The crane's structure was clearly visible, the long arm extending from structure to the building. Along the side of the warehouse's western wall, small windows punctuated the length. She couldn't see through them, the sun's angle already glaring in the glass panes. Switching to the unit's thermal imager, she scanned over the building slowly.

In the centre, the imager picked up a warm body. Making a correction for the external heat of the building in the afternoon sun, Ellie watched the image come into focus. The demon was moving, walking slowly from one end of the room to the other.

"Got her."

" _Where?"_ Dean's voice asked in her ear.

"Top floor, centre of the western side of the building," she answered. "She's alone."

" _What's she doing?"_

"Pacing, by the looks of it," she said.

" _Any chance we can take care of this now and get it over with?"_

"Negative," Ellie said. "No chance. Too many ways out."

" _So Plan A?"_

"Yeah." She moved the imager back to the crane. "Bait and switch."

" _Do we need to go in?"_ Dean asked.

"No," Ellie said. "Just check the perimeter for easy access at ground level."

" _Got it,"_ he answered. _"You gonna keep an eye on her?"_

"Yep, I got her."

Moving the imager back to the room where Meg was still pacing, Ellie wondered who the demon was waiting for. The steady and relentless pacing didn't give much support to the idea it was a friend.

* * *

At the corner of the warehouse, Dean leaned against the wall, waiting for Moses to cross the gravelled lot. Distantly, he could hear the work going on in the scrap metal yard on the right side of the building, and further still the hoots and sounds from upstream, but the weedy lot and warehouse were silent, heat radiating off the metal siding and slowly cooking him.

Moses reached the corner and cocked a brow. Dean nodded, jerking his thumb to the left side of the building. They could each take a side, check out the hardware and doors.

The enormous roller door next to him had a couple of standard locks, nothing that'd take more than a minute to get through. Turning to the right, he following the wall of the building up the long side. The only regular-sized door was on the other side. Reaching the next corner, he glanced around. The road that ran parallel to the river was empty, its tarmac baking in the mid-summer heat. The front lot was smaller than the rear. Tired, dispirited-looking grass struggled to grow through the gravel, browned off and matted close to the gates.

From around the other corner, Moses appeared silently and they met at the huge roller door at the front, a glance showing the locks to be exactly the same as those at the back.

"Postern's got a dead-bolt," Moses said in a low voice. "Nothin' fancy."

"Good." He wiped an arm over his face, the sweat running in rivulets down his back itching. "Let's get the fuck outta here."

"After you." The bigger man nodded, eyes slitted against the glare as he casually scanned around the empty ground. "Go in after dark?"

Dean nodded as they walked around the far corner, the soft-soled combat boots silent on the cracked, concrete walkway to the river end of the building. As he passed the postern door, he glanced at it, verifying Moses' assessment. Nothin' fancy. Sam wouldn't have a problem with it.

"Hopefully it'll be cooler," Dean muttered. "We clear?"

" _Yes."_ Ellie's voice was low and crisp in his earpiece. _"Go."_

Crossing the open back lot at a doubled-over run, he dropped below the levee embankment and rolled out of the way as Moses jumped down beside him.

Ellie would go in, attract Meg's attention and rabbit for the stairs. He'd be behind them both, he hoped. And, at the foot of the narrow, metal stairs, there'd be a circle of holy oil, reading for lighting and nine hunters, blocking every other way out.

It'd work, he thought, moving through the thick mud by the river's edge. If whoever Meg was hanging around for didn't show up. If the demon was distracted enough. If Lucifer hadn't regained enough power to knock them all into next week.

If … if … if.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

 _ **11.30 p.m. July 4, 2012. St Louis, Missouri**_

Parking the Jeep a block away from the warehouse's address, Sam got out and walked around to the rear doors, pulling one open and unzipping the black, canvas gear bag that lay in the back. He still wasn't certain Ellie's motivation in putting him out of the main action hadn't been partly to short-circuit his older brother's protective instinct, and partly some plan cooked up between them to keep pushing female company onto him. He'd been trying not to acknowledge how much he was missing Tricia; her sharp intelligence and humour, her no-nonsense view of the world, the softer side he'd seen more and more as he'd healed under her care. The last text he'd had from her had been a week ago. _Busy with the new cases_ , she'd said. _Will call when there's time_.

He pulled out a Remington pump and the double-barrelled sawn-off Dean usually gave Ellie, checking it was loaded and handing it to Carol. Lifting out a ten-pound bag of rock salt, he handed that to the girl as well, telling her she'd need to make a six-foot circle around the doorway when they got to the building. She nodded, tucking the bag under one arm, her eyes bright.

It wouldn't even make Lucifer hesitate, he knew, but if Meg'd called in reinforcements, it would give them some place to stand. Fitting the comms unit to her and adjusting his own, he wondered if Meg was enjoying the company of the devil as much as she'd thought she would.

"All that talk," Carol said, turning to look at the building. "About a war and genocide … do you really believe it'll come to that?"

Tucking another box of shells into his coat pocket, Sam nodded. Locked away, deep in the furthest corner of his mind, the devil's monologues still murmured and screamed, laughed and crackled with bitterness. He'd been bound and gagged, forced to listen to the fallen angel's endless litany of complaints and justifications, for what'd felt like a lifetime.

"Lucifer fell deliberately," he said to her. "He would've seen Heaven destroyed, every angel murdered, rather than acknowledge his father had loved humanity more than his sons."

Shutting the back door of the Jeep, he turned to her, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "The only thing he really wants is to wipe everyone out. He thought he'd be able to do it by defeating Michael, but that didn't work out."

"But you think he'll get his power back if the … um … archdemons can find him?"

Ellie did, Sam thought. "I don't know."

In those distant memories, the fallen angel had talked of a throne, a seat of power. Somewhere in Hell had been the impression he'd gotten from Lucifer's frequently pointless ramblings. A conduit to the billions of souls trapped in the pit.

"Doesn't it freak you out?" Carol asked, her enthusiasm gone. "All of this? It's so big."

Sam blinked. It was big. It'd been big for a long time now. "I, uh, try not to think about the big picture too much," he said. "Just this bit. Then the next, you know?"

 _Break whatever it is down to manageable chunks_ , Ellie's voice came back, another memory. Older. His brother strung up in a room and impatience beating a tattoo under his skin.

"That works?"

He gave her a one-sided smile. "Most of the time."

* * *

Trent pulled in behind him fifteen minutes later. The hunter got out of his car and took a bag from the rear seat, nodding to him and glancing curiously at Carol.

"We got the baby-sitting duty?" he asked, and Sam's mouth twisted up.

"Looks like," he said, relaxing fractionally. At least he'd be able to pass off protection to Trent if he needed to. "You ready?"

"Born ready," Trent agreed laconically.

Sam handed him the earpiece and throat mike and watched him slip the comms on, tapping his mike. "Can you hear?"

Trent nodded. "Five by five."

The hunter's voice came through his earpiece clearly and he nodded in satisfaction. They were out of range for the others; a deliberate factor, Ellie'd said, the tight effective distance to keep from being heard by any official or not-so-official listeners. They'd be in range once everyone was in the building.

It was hard to keep in mind that demons and the rulers of Hell weren't the only problem they were facing, he thought, waving the Remington in the direction of the warehouse and letting Trent take point. The levis weren't sitting on their hands. Every day that went by without interference to their plans was probably making the whole damned situation a lot worse.

 _One impossible problem at a time, Sammy_ , Dean's voice reproved gently in his mind. His big brother, not renowned for his patience, had that part of the job down cold. Something else Dean and Ellie shared, he realised. Most likely from lessons learned the hard way.

* * *

Dean looked up at the metal tower, the crane's motor and arm seeming a lot higher than he remembered from the morning's recce. It hadn't looked anywhere near this high on the satellite image either.

The angular struts would be easy enough to climb, he thought, so long as he didn't look down. It was the crawl along the crane arm he wasn't looking forward to. A thirty-foot drop to the concrete base. Probably wouldn't kill him, he decided. Just break both legs.

Two squares of yellow shone into the darkness from the building's side. Halfway along, same as before. The crane arm protruded into the building through a parking door, Ellie'd told him. Not the loading door that was four feet to the right and five times as big.

In black, her bright hair braided into a coronet and hidden beneath a dark knitted cap, she glanced at him, one brow lifting. "You okay?" she asked, her voice barely audible but the words clear through his earpiece.

"Yeah," he said, pulling on his gloves. "Fine."

"We've got one minute," she said, turning for the framework and starting to climb. Within seconds, it seemed, she was halfway up, her outline disappearing into the obscured tangle of black metalwork and grey shadow.

He drew in a deep breath and started after her, checking his hand and foot holds. The Benelli hung across his back, low enough, he hoped, to avoid snagging on the frame. The Colt was in his belt, fully loaded. He and Bobby'd spent four days on making the extra rounds, after getting out of Hell. He'd used a few at the hospital but he still had a box in his gear bag, and ten extras in his coat pocket.

Easing himself around the crane's cab, he swore inwardly as his hand slid from a greased pipe, heart rocketing into his throat as he swung one-handed out from the derrick's head and back in again. Ahead of him, Ellie had reached the arm and was tucking her gloves into her pockets.

 _Fuck_. This wasn't even the hard bit, he thought, looking for a non-greasy handhold. There was still the fucking arm to get across yet. And, oh yeah, a demon to trick and trap. Ha ha.

"S'funny you didn't mention this when we were here earlier." Dean looked at the narrow steel frame of the crane's arm, his gaze dragged involuntarily down to the concrete below.

"Thought I'd surprise you." She reached up to the wire controlling the arm, feeling with her foot for the lower frame.

"I'm surprised." He watched her swivel around, both feet on the arm, balancing on the narrow frame. "Can I go with Twist now?"

There was a flash of white as she smiled in the darkness. Turning away, she began to crawl quickly along the struts, her small frame a fleeting shadow against the grey metal.

Huffing out a irritated exhale, he manoeuvred himself carefully under the motor and pulleys, hands gripping the struts tightly as his feet felt for anything solid to stand on. She made it look easy 'cause she was half his size, he thought sourly, following her across the drop.

At the other end, Ellie'd reached the narrow slot housing the business end of the hoist head. He stopped moving for a moment to see her twist herself around the arm and disappear into the darkness.

 _Something to look forward to_ , he thought, inching his way the rest of the way. A light flickered inside, Ellie's flashlight, shielded by one hand. He could see enough to pick the most likely place he'd fit through.

Arms extended in front of him, he tried not to think about the drop to the ground as he inched his way along the top of the arm and twisted his shoulders diagonally to get past the crane's hoisting block and jib wire. For a long moment, he was clinging onto the side of the damned thing, one foot feeling helplessly around for the lower part of the entry frame; shoulders, hands and arms taking his weight and complaining. A hand gripped his ankle, dragging it forward and he felt something solid under his foot. He transferred his weight thankfully and edged around the block.

"Let's not do that again," he suggested, wiping a hand over his face when he stepped down onto the floor.

Along one side of the upper floor, full floor-to-ceiling glass windows delineated the interior wall, overlooking the cavernous and mostly empty ground floor. On the other, offices or storage rooms took up the length of the building. The doors to them were solid, but he could see a thin line of light, halfway down the long, straight hall, shining obliquely over the floor.

He glanced at his watch. The others would be in place now, the circle poured out at the foot of the stairs. It was showtime.

He lifted a quizzical brow at Ellie and she nodded, moving ahead of him along the corridor.

She stopped by the door leaking light from its edges, shifting to the hinge side as he stepped in front of it. The lock was a cheap spring catch and he kicked, twisting sideways, his boot sole slamming into the door just above the knob with every ounce of his weight behind it. Door knob and lock broke free and the door flew open.

Ellie was inside before him, and he followed, scanning the room, the Colt in his hand. Meg was on her feet, backing quickly toward the other end of the room.

"Dean! What a surprise." The demon's gaze flicked from side to side.

 _Looking for a way out_ , Dean decided, _or a weapon_. It suggested she wasn't looking for a confrontation.

"C'mon, you're not really going to try to use those on me, are you?" Her gaze swung back to them, darting from the long, slender knife in Ellie's hand to the long-barrelled Colt he held. She laughed, but he thought it was a little forced.

"I thought you'd have remembered they can't do anything to me, Dean," she said, her voice changing, the pitch dropping, the timbre rounding, each word coming out more distinctly.

Dean's step faltered as he recognised the voice coming out of Meg's mouth, saw the demon's countenance alter at the same time, Meg's bright-eyed malice disappearing and the devil's heavy-lidded, contemplative expression taking over. The lids lifted and red light played around and through the demon's dark irises.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ellie moving forward, and he took a longer stride to keep even with her. _Pay attention_ , he told himself. _Do not fuck up_.

"They won't kill you, but they'll kill Meg." Dean stared into the reddish eyes. The last time he'd been this close to the fallen angel, Lucifer'd pounded the crap out of him with his brother's fists. He shoved the tainted recollection aside. "No vessel, no return to power."

Lucifer laughed. "You think I need the demon or this meatsuit to live? Can't say the last couple of years have been fun, exactly, but they've been educational, Deano. Little Sammy's noggin was full of interesting information, and y'know, sometimes, I surprise even myself."

"That doesn't sound too hard," Dean muttered, and the demon grinned at him briefly, turning and focussing the red-rimmed eyes on Ellie.

"And this must be Eleanor," the devil said in a rich, slow drawl that made Dean's skin twitch. "We haven't met – formally – though my little housemate did try to fill in the blanks."

Meg shook her head, her gaze shooting to Dean. "He likes having plenty of hostages to fortune, doesn't he? Sometimes, more than he realises."

In his chest, Dean's heart gave an erratic beat, and he lifted the Colt, biting back his instinctive response.

"I've heard a lot about you," Lucifer continued, ignoring the movement as he stared at the red-haired hunter. "I have to say, you're smaller than I'd thought you'd be."

As she moved in a shallow circle around Meg to cut off any chance of the demon trying to get around her, Dean was relieved to see Lucifer's taunts weren't getting a response from her.

"You managed to annoy Raphael practically beyond reason," Lucifer added, stretching Meg's mouth out in a wide smile. "That alone gives us something in common."

Behind the demon, the doorway to the next room was open, and it threw a fast glance over its shoulder, backing through it. Dean kept the Colt's sight over its chest as Ellie followed. She was tight to the right of the door frame, out of his line. The next room had large, sliding windows along the interior wall, but only small, high windows near the ceiling in the exterior. The door leading out was at the end of the long room, closed.

He hurried through the open doorway, following the windowed wall as Ellie moved wide and took the external one.

"They tell me you're a spoiler. One of my Father's natural little monkey wrenches." Lucifer slowed down, his attention still on Ellie, the smile lingering but the expression in Meg's eyes cold and thoughtful. "Came very close to ruining our plans several times."

Ellie'd slowed as well, watching Meg indirectly as she kept on her flank. "Ah, well, you know the saying – if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."

The demon threw back its head and laughed. "Oh, yes, that's what I'm doing."

Spinning around, Meg crashed through the last window pane beside the door, the glass exploding outward into the corridor, blood streaming from a dozen deep cuts as she clambered over the shards and bolted for the stairs to the ground floor.

Without hesitation, Ellie shot forward, vaulting through the opening and disappearing after her. Dean grimaced, seeing the scrap of black cloth against one upright dagger of glass. Sweeping out the long, upright pieces with the Colt's barrel, he let his coat slide down one arm and around his hand before he grabbed the frame and jumped through.

The demon leapt down the first section of metal steps and stopped on the half-landing as the hunters emerged from the shadows on the ground level, spreading out into a loose circle around the base of the staircase. Dean saw her face, white against the darkness behind her, as he caught up to Ellie and they descended toward the demon. Swinging around, Meg took the rest of the steps slowly, her gaze flitting from one face to another.

"A welcoming party," Lucifer said, stopping and clapping Meg's hands together when she reached the last step. "I'm flattered, but you really shouldn't've."

Dean exhaled as Meg stepped from the bottom riser into the circle. The demon pivoted in place, her eyes narrowed as she watched the nine hunters close up around her. Not one of them was looking at her, their gazes averted to one side or the other.

"Oh, Sammy! Long time no see." Lucifer's gaze locked onto Sam, the red light in Meg's eyes brightening.

On the far side of the circle, Sam lifted his eyes, his face expressionless. He moved forward with the others, tightening the circle.

"Of course, not that long, as some of us measure time, but it feels like a long time. But we were so close, I couldn't tell what was you and what was me."

"Light it," Dean said, flicking the lighter in his hand to life and dropping it.

* * *

Around the edge of the circle, the lighters fell onto the oil in unison and the flames rose instantly, casting umber and pewter shadows over the faces of the hunters. For a moment, in the clear, piercing light of the strengthening holy fire, Ellie thought she saw another face under Meg's features; masculine, unnaturally symmetrical, beautiful.

Meg's head cocked suddenly. The devil smiled, his aspect clear behind her face. "By the way, did I forget to mention I've got company coming tonight?"

Ellie felt it, at first, a deep vibration that reverberated through her bones, shrilled in her teeth and in the spaces in her skull. Beneath their feet the earth was moving – straining, she thought – and she stared disbelievingly at the demon. _So much for Meg being smart_.

"You called them?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Past time to be getting picky about my options," he said. "You know, poor little Meg really believed all that bullshit you filled her with."

"We didn't lie, Lucifer," Sam snapped, his face tight. "They won't hand it all back to you."

"You don't know that, my darling," Lucifer said, turning to look at him. "They were loyal to me from the beginning. And in spite of what you might've heard, they'll be loyal to the very end. They love me."

The rumbling noise became louder and more distinct, rising through the ground and increasing in pitch. To one side of the long warehouse floor, the concrete floor groaned, wide splits and fissures crackling through it. Puffs of grey and yellow steam escaped, writhing to the ceiling, bringing the pungent stink of brimstone.

"They're he-ere," Lucifer said, chuckling. "Happy Fourth of July!"

"Everyone get back!" Ellie yelled, waving her arms at the hunters surrounding the circle. "Get out! NOW!"

The moment of paralysing shock passed and they all turned, racing for the river door as the floor continued to creak and rumble on the other side of the holy fire circle.

"Oh, Eleanor?" Lucifer called out as she accelerated after Dean. She checked, throwing a look over her shoulder at the devil.

"You be sure to keep that child safe!" Meg's body danced around the edges of the burning circle.

Ellie swore inwardly, turning and running after Dean, already a few yards ahead of her.

From the corner of her eye, she Sam grab Carol's arm, his long stride hauling her across the floor. They were almost at the postern door, Trent a stride or two behind him. In front of her, Moses and Laney, Dwight, Garth, Marcus and Twist were sprinting for the big roller door, several yards ahead of Dean.

The blast wave hit her in the back, the air expanding, thrusting her forward. Perception altered as she was lifted and thrown – she glimpsed Dean's face, his mouth open but she couldn't hear anything; behind him, she saw the walls of the warehouse buckle and balloon outwards, as outlandishly surrealistic as a cartoon drawing – then she was landing, managing to keep her feet and stumbling erratically as outward explosive force knocked her forward. An arm flashed into her peripheral vision and a hand closed hard around her arm, yanking her back onto her feet.

* * *

Beyond the circle, Dean saw the floor turn red, clouds of steam boiling from the yawning crack. He turned and ran, realising seconds later that Ellie was no longer next to him. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw her running, head down, and arms pumping, then a wall of pressure and heat hit him, effortlessly twisting him around and shoving him toward the open door. Peripherally, he saw Ellie stumble as the concussion outpaced her feet, and he braked, reaching out. His fingertips slid over her shirt before he managed to get one hand around her wrist, pulling her closer, stretching out his legs to keep them both upright as they ran for the back parking lot.

They were through the door, boots crunching on the gravel, when he threw another fast look over his shoulder. In the centre of the ground floor, a deep red light poured out of the ground, filling the interior of the warehouse, pulsing like the beat of a heart. Within the throbbing port-dark glow, several shapes were moving, indistinct, wreathed in shadow and steam.

He'd never seen them before, never even heard of them until recently, but he knew what they had to be. They surrounded the circle of fire and the flames died away, Lucifer stepping out. Three of the figures moved close to the devil. The other three turned outward, lifting their arms together. Jagged forks of black lightning arced from them to the walls of the building, the smell of burning metal, hot and acrid, filling the interior.

There was nothing flammable in the metal-framed and clad warehouse. They were going to blow it up anyway. The thoughts pushed and shoved at him and he lengthened his stride, his arm swinging around Ellie, dragging her in front of him as a second blast lifted him onto his toes, impelling him forward, the warehouse exploding behind them.

He hit the ground hard, rolling to break the impact. Metal and glass and plastic flew over his head, the night was lit up with fire behind them.

In every direction, the clanging, clattering, crashing noises of the warehouse's structure and contents hitting the ground and the hiss of steam as the superheated pieces hit the river beyond, were weirdly muted; a soundtrack with the volume turned way down. His ears were ringing, and he could feel liquid trickling down the side of his neck.

Getting to his knees, he stared around. He couldn't see Ellie, didn't know if she was ahead or behind him. The area around what was left of the building was littered with burning metal, the air noxious with the fumes of scorched earth and melting plastic. The flames filling the empty building were too bright to look at and he threw his arm over his eyes, squinting against the fierce light and heat, looking for any sign of movement.

* * *

Sam stopped as his arm sagged, yanked down by the dead weight. He looked down at Carol, her wrist held in his hand, lying at his feet. The last minute or two were blank. He could've sworn they'd been running.

Bending, he felt for her throat, fingers pressing into the side of her neck. A pulse beat there, strongly. His breath hissed out with the stabbing pain in his leg as he dropped to one knee. Must've been hit by something. The thought slid out of his mind as he pulled the girl closer, putting an arm around her back and leaning forward to slip the other under her knees. She wasn't heavy, but she was awkward, her head falling back over his arm, her weight shifting as he managed to get back on his feet. He turned and looked around.

He wasn't sure what had happened, only that for some reason the almost empty metal warehouse had exploded. At the back of his mind, something – some fact or knowledge - agitated. Something he remembered or didn't remember. It came to him as he reached the road.

The fuel depot. The huge tanks of gasoline and diesel.

 _Getawaygetawaygetaway_. Staggering across the road, the command pounded insistently through his head. _RunrunrunrunrunRUNRUNRUN!_

Where was Trent? The lanky hunter'd been right behind him. Where were Dean and Ellie? He couldn't see properly, something was running into one eye. The car was four blocks away. Forcing himself into a shambling trot, he stumbled over the kerbs, veering from side to side. In his leg, a long metal shard prevented the muscle from expanding and contracting properly but he wasn't aware of it, couldn't feel it.

 _Where was the goddamned car_ , he wondered despairingly, the girl's body weighing him down.

* * *

Garth lifted his head. The night sky was full of light and shadow but eerily silent. He was on the road, he thought, frowning. Pushing himself to his knees, he saw the man in front of him, lying frighteningly still. He crawled closer, and his stomach lurched.

 _Dwight_.

It was Dwight and there was something wrong with him. He lifted the older man's head, snatching his fingers away as a sharp edge sliced into them, bile and tears rising when Dwight's head bounced back onto the asphalt.

"Sorry, man, I'm sorry," he said, reaching out again. The fragment of metal gleamed in the red-gold light, emerging from the side of Dwight's skull, filling him with a disorienting sense of wrongness.

 _That shouldn't be there_ , Garth thought. Touching the other side of the hunter's head, and turning it gently toward him, he saw the lifeless eyes, open and staring. The contents of his stomach bubbled up his throat, burning and choking him and he turned away, ejecting the thin stream of bile onto the roadside, wiping his mouth when no more would come out.

Heat licked at him from behind and he crabbed around on his hands and knees, seeing the flames reaching up into the sky. On the other side of the warehouse was the Valvoline depot, he remembered. Big round tanks of fuel no more than a hundred yards from the inferno … he sucked in a deep breath, lurched to his feet and forced himself into a tottering run.

* * *

Twist rolled onto his hands and knees, wiping a hand over his face, wincing as the scrapes on his palm stung and prickled. Everywhere he looked, there were flames; incandescent light rippling, filled with roasting heat, the bitter and toxic smell of charred dirt and fried metal, glaring into his eyes. Next to him, Marcus lay bent in a way, he realised belatedly, the human body really wasn't designed for.

Hunkering back on his heels, he took a firm grip on Marcus' wrists and ankles, hoisting the other man over his shoulder, joints popping and cracking as he straightened slowly. His knees were smarting and he looked down. Over the ground, buckled metal mesh made a criss-cross pattern under his feet. Fence, he thought disconnectedly. Flattened now.

He headed for the road, the taste of burning metal in his mouth, the smell of his hair crisping on his scalp driving him forward. He didn't remember what'd happened. There'd been a push. From behind. Truck was on the next block over. _Get to it_ , some part of his mind insisted. _Now_.

It was bad, but something worse was comin'. He wasn't sure what that was, but he was sure he needed to be a long way away before it got here.

* * *

Moses blinked as small fingers wiped away the gunk sticking his eyelids together.

"C'mon, baby, get on your feet," a familiar voice rasped in his ear. "Gotta get the fuck outta here."

He forced his eyes to open, wincing as the too-bright light sent an ice-pick stab through them into his brain. "Laney?"

She didn't look right, he thought blearily. One side of her face was shiny and red, all the bouncing curls flattened and matted against her skull.

"Wh-t'hell happened to you?" he asked. He thought he'd asked that, but he couldn't be sure. There was something thick and wrong with his mouth.

Shaking her head at him, she leaned back on her haunches and took his hand. "We're in trouble, Moses," she said. "Get on your feet. I cain't carry you."

He pushed down with his hand as she pulled up, a grunt breaking free of his throat as that movement sent a blinding bolt of pain from wrist through shoulder and into his chest. He could smell something burning, wondering uncomfortably if it was him.

"Wh-happened?" he asked again, when he was sitting.

"Explosion," Laney said, shifting her hold to the front of his shirt. "Get up, man!"

Rolling onto his knees as she tugged and pulled at him, he managed to get himself vertical. "S'plosion?"

He remembered the interior of the warehouse. Empty. Nothing but metal and concrete. There'd been nothing to explode in there. "Not makin' sense."

"No," she agreed tightly. "Move!"

* * *

Ellie rolled over, sucking air in painfully. She'd been propelled forward, flying almost, and had hit the ground on her hands and forearms, tucking and rolling to try and break the force of the collision. She hadn't even seen the tree behind her, but from the pain in her back and the lack of air in her lungs, it seemed reasonable to assume she'd hit it somehow. She could feel the muscles protesting as she sat up, but aside from the grazes and some minor pain, she seemed to be in one piece.

Glancing around, she saw Dean on his feet, ten or fifteen yards away. His progress was more sideways than forward but he looked like he was heading back toward the remains of the burning building.

 _Wrong_. The thought was instant and panicky. _Trap_. _Danger_. _Fire._

Shaking her head, she tried to force some kind of coherence to the disjointed thoughts, swallowing hard against the thick nausea that filled her throat with the movement. The formless, pulsing anxiety drove her to her feet, overriding everything else.

"Dean!"

She'd shouted – she knew she had – but she couldn't hear it. Stumbling toward him, tears of frustration ran down her cheeks at the lack of coordinated response from her body, her gait jerky and slow.

"DEAN!"

He swung around, his face scraped and bloody, bloodshot eyes widening as he saw her. Relief made her knees sag and she waved an arm, swinging around, her gaze darting back and forth across the rear lot.

The fire had reached the scrubby brush dividing the warehouse's lot from the neighbouring commercial business and as her eyes followed its progress, licking through the dried-up grass and jumping from canopy to canopy, the huge cylindrical shapes behind the woods lit up.

Memory returned and with it a breath-stopping wave of fear. Adrenalin surged and burned through her, wiping away pain and thought and she grabbed his arm as he reached her.

" _RUN!"_

* * *

Dean shook his head as he saw Ellie's mouth open and close, the reflex action almost sending him to his knees. Catching himself, he took a few steps toward her, looking down as his legs wobbled. He could hardly hear her over a loud and insistent ringing. He'd been looking for the source of the irritating sound.

She grabbed his arm, dragging him as she turned and headed down the slope and he followed, his feet seeming to find every hole and fallen branch and rock, barely able to stay on them. He wasn't sure why they were running, but he was willing to go where she led, if only his feet and legs would pick up their game and stop trying to send him to the ground. There was something wrong with his back too – or his chest – he couldn't keep the flashes of pain straight.

The river was in front of them; he could see the flames reflecting on the dark surface, and he slowed, tugging on the grip on his arm when he realised she wasn't going to stop. Her fingers dug in, pulling him down to the water, both of them falling in when the bank dropped away. The river closed over his head before he'd had a chance to suck in a deep breath.

WHUMPF! WHUMPF! _WHUMPF!_

Below the muddy surface, he saw the world explode in flames, brilliant light and smeary colour and a muted roar that even managed to drown out the ringing noise for a few moments.

He couldn't see Ellie ahead of him; even with that too-bright light. He could feel her hand, still clenched tight around his wrist. Nausea churned in his stomach and he registered a pounding in his head as she pulled him deeper. She was, he thought dazedly, kicking through the current, angling them downstream away from a fiery sky and a burning heat he could almost feel through the freezing cold river.

 _Tanks'd exploded_. The thought drifted, nothing concrete to anchor it. He didn't know which tanks. He kicked out, legs feebly responding. His chest was aching. The muscles of his throat twitched. The breath he was holding was almost out of oxygen. He was going down in the water, losing heat and thought as the cold penetrated through the layers of clothing, to his skin, and deeper, taking strength from his muscles.

* * *

Ellie felt him sinking and kicked hard for the surface. She hoped they'd come down river far enough to be clear of the falling debris. The current here was somewhere in the vicinity of one and a half miles per hour; with any luck, they'd be out of range.

Breaking through to the air, she sucked down a deep breath, grimacing at the taint of the burning fuel that coated her tongue. She submerged again, dropping below Dean to lift his arm over her shoulder. He wasn't moving, and she rolled in the water as she kicked hard, twisting when they reached the surface, filling her lungs to keep them afloat and on their backs. Dean's mouth opened, his chest shuddering and expanding, eyes cracking open as the fresh air inflated his lungs.

In the brilliant, burning light of the fire, she could see the puckered white edges of the head wound above and behind his ear, washed bloodless by the river.

He started treading water, taking the drag of his weight from her, eyes focussing as oxygen filled his blood, pumped through his body. Ellie looked over her shoulder. The banks weren't more than ten or fifteen yards away and she tugged at him, drawing him after her as she kicked toward them. A moment or two later, he added his stronger kick to hers, and Ellie felt the soft river mud beneath her fingers and knees, letting Dean go and crawling up out of the water to the dry bank.

Dean followed, collapsing onto his shoulder and grunting with pain when he reached her. He was alive. They were both alive, she thought tiredly. She hoped it would be the same for everyone else.

* * *

Turning his head, Dean hawked back and spat the taste of river and acrid fuel from his mouth. His head was still aching, but feeling was slowly returning to his limbs. He could hear again, he realised, registering the guttural roar of the fire upstream, the sound of sirens and fusillade of bangs and crashes as more of the depot caught alight.

He turned back at the tap on his shoulder, lifting a hand and rubbing at his eyes when Ellie leaned over him. The movement brought a sharp stab of pain, somewhere behind his shoulder and a grinding sensation in his chest.

"Can you hear me?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

His voice sounded raw, too high and as if he'd been eating glass. Swallowing and clearing his throat, he tried again. "You alright?"

"Cuts and bruises," Ellie said, sitting up. "You've got a bad cut on your head."

"S'plains the pounding," he muttered, pushing himself upright. "T'hell happened?"

"It wasn't a trap – at least, not for us," she said, rubbing the inside of her wrist over her temple. "Meg called the archdemons, stripped her warding. The warehouse exploded and that," she added, turning to look at the conflagration up the river. "took out the fuel tanks at the depot."

Getting stiffly to her feet, she held out her hand. "We have to get going. Get back and find the others."

He took it, digging his bootheels into the soft bank and letting her pull him up. Nothing felt like it was working right, his joints creaking and his arms and legs heavy and unresponsive. Probably the cold of the river water, he decided, taking a few steps. The aches'd work out once he got going. His head was sore, and he reached up to the cut, flinching at the sting when he touched it.

Looking up the river at the fire raging along the buildings, he walked beside Ellie to the top of the shallow bank. They crossed the road and headed inland, turning right when they were several blocks from the river, north to where they'd left the cars.

* * *

 _ **9.00 a.m. July 5, 2012. Overlook Motel, O'Fallon**_

Ellie wrapped the towel around herself, and dried off. The cut on the side of her thigh was stinging, but that, some bruising on her back and her messed up palms and forearms seemed to be the extent of her injuries.

Dean was a little worse. Along with the cut on the side of his head, she'd also had to pull out a four-inch piece of glass from his back, where it had hit the shoulder blade and lodged against the bone. He'd cracked three ribs, and broken a finger.

Sam, Carol and Marcus were at the local hospital. Moses, Laney, Garth, Trent and Twist were back in their rooms, a few doors away. None had escaped injury entirely, but the cuts, burns and bruising had all been minor.

Sam had a long cut down the side of his face, and a hole in his leg where a piece of metal had gone into the big muscle of his thigh, missing the femoral artery by less than inch. She'd called the hospital an hour before and he was out of surgery and sleeping.

Carol's multiple cuts and bruising, the lump on her forehead and a fractured wrist had been taken care of in the ER. A possible concussion had kept her under observation until the next day. Her mother was driving out tomorrow.

Marcus had a suspected skull fracture. They'd relieved the swelling in his brain and he'd be in the hospital under observation for another week. Moses' had a mild concussion, dislocated shoulder and twisted knee. Laney'd been thrown into a wall; her face and side black and blue, but with no worse injuries.

Dwight was dead. She still had to call Trish to let her know.

Considering the secondary explosions at the depot had taken out a six block area, she supposed they'd been lucky. None of it felt particularly lucky. Her memories of the night's events had been returning, in fits and starts. Dean had told he'd seen figures coming out of the ground in the warehouse. There'd been nothing in the building to cause the first explosion, but that wouldn't have mattered to the archdemons. She wondered if Lucifer was reconsidering his decision, now that he was powerless, and under their control.

She closed the bathroom door and crossed the room, taking a seat on the edge of the bed to towel-dry her hair and look down at the man lying in it.

Dean turned his head toward her, his eyes a bright green, their focus wandering. The pale freckles over his cheeks and nose stood out against the pallor of his skin and under the bright white bandage wrapped around his head.

She'd shaved the hair away from the cut in his head, three inches long but not deep, closed the wound and dressed it. It gave him something of the look of a punk rocker slash hellfire biker, that shaved patch with the thick and twisting purplish line running through it. Had taped his ribs, put three stitches into the incision on his back and straightened his middle finger, taping it to the ring finger. He'd refused to go to the hospital, and had provided his own anaesthetic by drinking half a bottle of whiskey.

"Hey," he slurred, his eyes opening wide then narrowing as he tried to bring her into focus.

"Hey." Leaning over, she kissed him lightly, the corners of her mouth tucking in when his eyes crossed, an attempt to keep her in view that ruined the punk biker look completely.

He was kind of a fun drunk. Very earnest and generous and completely convinced of the importance of the things that occurred to him on a minute-by-minute basis. He took a lot of care articulating what he felt he needed to say, clearly conscious that some of his finer communication skills disappeared with large amounts of alcohol.

"Are you all, uh, in one piece?" he asked, enunciating each word and staring owlishly at the towel. "Uh, under there?"

Experience had taught her that encouraging conversation when he was in this state was a bad idea. She smiled and let the towel drop. "Yeah, all okay."

Slipping into the bed next to him, she rolled over, glad to feel the warmth of his skin. It'd taken a while to get rid of the chill. His hand fumbled up over her hip, creeping around her ribs to cup her breast. Despite his high tolerance for whiskey, he could still get drunk, and as optimistically amorous as any other inclined male who'd had a few too many.

"You should sleep," she said. There were no signs of concussion. He'd claimed it was an especially hard part of his head. The second round of mild painkillers she'd given him would be kicking in any time now. "You need to rest."

"Yeah. Tired. I'm really tired. I really need to sleep." He closed his eyes. "My finger hurts."

"It'll feel better in the morning."

"I'm cold."

She snorted softly. He was radiating heat like a defective reactor. Shifting closer to him, she slid her thigh over his, and rested her arm over his stomach, below his ribs. "Better?"

"Mmmm." He turned his face into her neck, his hand rubbing slowly over her nipple. "We could, uh … you know, fool around."

"We could," she said, smiling at his confidence. "But you need to sleep."

"Mmmm."

* * *

 _ **9.00 p.m. August 2, 2012. Scotts Mills, Willamette Valley, Oregon**_

Sam stretched his leg out, one hand kneading the ache in the muscle, the other picking up his beer as he looked around the table and studied the faces of the hunters sitting there.

His brother was talking to Marcus, neither looking happy about the conversation. Dean looked older, he thought. So did Marcus. The lines in their faces were etched more deeply, adding years. Dean's hair was growing back over the cut on the side of his head, but he could see the thin scar through it. Letting out a tired sigh, he thought he probably looked older as well. He felt older. Decades older. The last three weeks had taken their toll on everyone.

Sitting beside his brother, Ellie's gaze was on the windows of the bar, her face expressionless. She'd lost some weight, her eyes and mouth just that little bit too big against the delicacy of her features, sharper now under tightly-drawn skin.

On the other side of the table, Twist's hair and beard were almost all gray and trimmed short. The laid-back sense of humour that'd been a part of his expressions, a part of his character, Sam thought, had gone. The hunter sat next to Tricia, holding her hand in both of his, listening to Trent as the lean man talked about something in a voice too low to be heard clearly.

Putting the beer down, Sam shifted uncomfortably in his chair, aware he wanted to stare at her, wanted to take her hand and talk to her. He'd tried to several times since she'd flown out from Chicago; first at the hospital in St Louis, then when she'd arrived in Oregon. There hadn't been a lot of time or opportunity to see her alone and he hadn't thought a public conversation was what either of them wanted. Her face was pinched-looking, her expression sombre as she listened to the conversations around her, and the sight was making his chest ache. The loss of her father had left her alone. He wasn't sure why she was here. He didn't think it was a good idea.

Leaning back, he turned his head to look around the small bar. The room was sparsely occupied, the locals keeping to themselves at the L-shaped counter or around the single pool table at the far end. The place was quiet and dim, the small windows at the front of the building mostly obscured by signs or dirt, reminding him of the Harvelle's roadhouse. The hunters had taken over a couple of small tables at the end of the single room, pushing them together, talking in low voices, hunched over their drinks. The heavily-built bar tender had kept their orders coming without asking any questions.

The door opened, and he turned automatically, watching Frank walk in, shake raindrops from his coat as he pulled it off and hung it on the coat rack. The programmer glanced around discreetly, keeping his gaze low enough to avoid eye contact with anyone, and made his way to the bar, ordering a drink before he walked to the tables and took the chair next to Sam.

"So. Another cluster-fuck." The grizzled programmer glowered at the hunters.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

Frank's mouth thinned out as the bartender brought his drink over to the table. The man glanced questioningly around the group for any other orders, shrugging at the silence and returning to the bar counter.

"What's Plan B?" Frank sipped the clear liquid in his glass. "Is there a Plan B? Or are we all going to crawl away and lick our wounds somewhere safe and dark and quiet?"

Sam winced internally as he saw Twist's face darken.

"Take it easy, Frank," Ellie said, her voice quiet but sharp enough to cut glass.

"Take it _easy_ –?"

"Yeah," Dean cut him off. "Take it easy."

Frank glared at him, but sat back, his fist wrapping around his glass.

There wasn't any doubt as to who was in charge, Sam thought, his gaze shifting from the mulish expression on Frank's face to the brief glance that passed between his brother and the red-haired hunter. The fleeting look sent a frisson down his spine. It was familiar. His father and brother had occasionally exchanged looks like that.

He brought his attention back to Ellie as she leaned forward. Most of what she was about to tell the others he'd already heard, at the sprawling rented house they'd been staying in for the last two weeks, but he wanted to hear it again, through the fresh perspectives of those who hadn't.

"Plan B is going to be a two-parter," she said, her gaze moving around the table. "We got some information from Penemue yesterday – and it was confirmed by Castiel this morning. The Others have entered the country, at least a dozen of them. That was also confirmed by Ray this morning, when he ran the B&C checks."

"What's the point?" Marcus asked. "The archdemons've already grabbed the devil."

"The Watcher thinks they're still in the market for some kind of deal," Dean said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "We're a couple of steps closer to a war here – maybe they're hedging their bets?"

Ellie nodded. "Penemue is on his way back, with his brothers, but they'll need some help to deal with them."

"What are 'the Others'?" Tricia asked, glancing from Ellie to Marcus.

"More fallen angels," Frank grated. Ellie shot a quelling look in his direction before nodding to Tricia.

"They chose to fall, to live on earth," she said. "They were in Lucifer's army, when he challenged Heaven, but when the fighting looked like it was going Michael's way, they ran."

"Traitors," Frank muttered, staring into his glass. "Everyone hates 'em."

"They're not as powerful as Penemue or the other Watchers," Ellie continued, ignoring Frank, her gaze shifting from Tricia to Twist and Trent and Garth. "And nowhere near as powerful as Castiel or any of the Host, but though they're mortal now, they were angels, and it's hard to kill them."

"Define 'hard'." Twist leaned toward her.

"You have to cut out their hearts." She made a face. "They'll regenerate otherwise."

"Did Ray get any info on the nephilim?" Marcus asked.

"Not yet," Ellie said. "He's adapting facial-recognition software, but there isn't the same level of perfect symmetry as with the fallen, and it needs a few more tweaks."

"Damnably good argument for regulating the super-model business, isn't it?" Frank interjected.

"What?" Garth blinked at the programmer.

"Frank," Ellie said. "Can you at least try to stay on track?"

"Um, the nephilim?" Tricia asked, her gaze swinging from Marcus to Ellie.

"The nephilim are the offspring between angel and a human," Sam said, leaning toward her, his elbows propped on the table. "Specifically, between a fallen angel, and a human woman. Like the angels, they're not that hard to recognise, although they don't have the perfection that angels have."

He glanced at Ellie, his brow furrowed. "There's, uh, quite a bit of religious lore about them."

She nodded. "There're a number of texts the Church doesn't recognise officially. The mythology of the fallen angels is covered in several of them, Apocryphal and Gnostic."

"' _When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.'_ " Marcus quoted, shaking his head. "But most of the texts can't make up their minds if the fallen angels were good or bad."

"Well, according to Penemue –"

"Who, in some of those texts is actually named as an accomplice of Yeqon, the leader of the Others –" Frank pointed out.

"– twelve angels were instructed by the Voice of God to fall to earth, to teach humanity and guide them to a better understanding of the world and their place in it," Ellie said, rubbing her fingertips over her brow as she shot a look at Frank.

Marcus shrugged. "Alright. I'll take a direct account over the misinterpreted and mistranslated documents history's given us any day of the week."

Sam agreed silently. Too much of the lore they'd spent their lives relying on was subject to the flaws of perception, of understanding, of those who'd written it. He'd been looking over Ray's framework for Ellie's database for the past two weeks, and still wasn't sure how to get around that weakness in the sources.

"In any case, he said they Fell with their Grace and created constructs – human bodies – from the earth and air and waters – that's why, in appearance, they seem perfect – and they fell in love with human women and had families," Ellie continued, and her gaze seemed to linger on his brother and him for a moment before she added, "He also told me their lines in human genealogy are the only suitable vessels for certain of the angels and for many of the older psychic, hunter and magical families."

Sam's mouth fell open. Dean'd mentioned something, a while ago, about the bloodlines of angels. He couldn't remember the details. "What?"

Her glance was apologetic. "He was pretty clear about it. The lines were essential conduits to Heaven, so it doesn't sound like the beginning of rebellion in Heaven that some of those religious texts claim."

"What about the rest? We're talkin' about more'n twelve here, ain't we?" Twist cut in.

"Yeah," Ellie said. "The Others also took human wives and had children. Originally, there were more than three thousand of them, but God sent a Flood and most were wiped out, along with some of the Watcher lines."

"Not entirely reliable, that plan," Trent muttered.

Dean's mouth quirked humourlessly to one side. "You think?"

"Like the fallen, there are nephilim who want to help humanity and there are those who want to wipe us out," Ellie explained, ignoring the comments. "The nephilim are more powerful than their fathers – all the power of angels, but possessing the souls of humankind. They can't draw on the power of Heaven, the way a full angel can, but they can – kind of – pool their power between them, making a group significantly stronger than the individuals. They also can't be killed without cutting out the heart."

"Uh … I don't want to be the sad-sack Sally here, but is there any good news in this at all?" Garth set his beer carefully down and turned to look around the table, the frustration in his face not really masking the fear underneath. "I mean, you're talking about super-powerful angels, super-powerful half-breeds, super-powerful demons, war on earth … as if we can do something about them? We got our asses kicked bigtime just being in the same location as a bunch of archdemons. I'm not seeing an up side to any of this? We're just … people, y'know?"

Frank snorted. "Up side? Whaddya think this is? A TV series? There's no up side. Here's what happens if we do nothing – the good angels and the bad angels will fight each other until they're all gone and _then_ the devil and Hell will mop up everything else. You think _that's_ a good scenario?"

"What we're doing is making sure Penemue and the Watchers have our help against the Others. They're not expecting resistance and definitely not human help," Ellie said hurriedly, before Frank could aggravate anyone else. "And that brings us to part two of the plan. If we can get Michael out of the Cage, he will lead the Host of Heaven against Hell."

"That all? Just face off a bunch of fallen angels and get into Hell to jail-break an archangel?" Garth muttered, looking at his soda. "Sounds like eighty-twenty to me."

"Yeah, it's long odds." Marcus lifted one brow at him. "But when do we ever get anything else?"

"What're we talkin' about here?" Trent asked. "Who does what?"

His brother leaned toward Ellie, his voice too low to hear. She nodded, and looked around the table again.

"For the moment, that's all we've got," she said. "This is a volunteer-only job. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun. If you're in, grab yourself some accommodation, make sure you've got clean IDs and stay in touch. We'll know more in a day or so."

She got up, pushing her chair back. Dean stood as well, his gaze flicking to Sam.

Catching the glance, Sam nodded, rising to his feet and leaning on the table. "Uh, you got a place to stay?" he asked Tricia. "We've got plenty of room, if you need one?"

She shook her head. "Thanks, but I'll be staying with Marcus for a few days." She gave a small shrug, her gaze ducking his. "I'm sorry, Sam – there's a lot – we'll catch up in a little while, okay?"

He nodded and turned away, following Dean and Ellie out of the bar.

* * *

 _ **11.00 p.m.**_

"We could make this our base." Dean looked at Ellie as he put another couple of logs onto the fire. They were a couple of thousand feet above sea level and the nights were cool and usually damp, despite the warmth of the days.

"Uh huh," she murmured absently, staring at the laptop open on the low table in front of her.

The big house was a three-month rental, a renovated hunting lodge on the edge of the Santiam State Forest. Four bed, three bath, plenty of room and tucked away out of sight of the road. Polished wooden floors and exposed beams comprised the primary décor, the ultra-modern kitchen and bathrooms disguised with rustic-styled linings and doors. The living area was split-level, divided for lounging and dining, the furniture functional and comfortable. Up the open staircase, the big bedrooms looked across ranges and forest.

It was strongly built, and had been constructed before fashion dictated that every exterior wall have dozens of windows and doors. It would be easy to defend, he thought, looking around.

"Ellie?" He walked to the couch, dropping next to her and picking up his beer.

"Mmm?"

"The house? A base?" He tilted his head to see her profile, recognising the narrow focus. "Ten kids? A few, uh, pets? I could, y'know, get a job as a male stripper at the bar?"

She seemed to catch the last few words, turning and blinking at him. "You want to strip at the bar?"

He grinned, lop-sidedly, just on the side of his face that didn't pull at the cut. "Sure. You don't think I'd be any good at it?"

She shook her head. "Too inhibited."

"I am not."

"Yeah?" Ellie raised a brow. "Give me a preview. Slowly. Stereo's on the shelf."

"Here?" Dean looked around. "Uh, c'mon – what if Sam –?"

"I rest my case."

"I'll reset – rest your –" he started to protest, giving it up when he saw her smile. "Admit it; you just want me all to yourself."

"Okay. I just want you all to myself," she said, the grin widening. "We need to talk to Cas."

"Now?"

"Well, as soon as possible," Ellie said, lifting a hand to rub absently at her temple. "Timetable seems to be getting tighter."

"You okay?"

"Probably not in the general sense of the word," Ellie allowed, leaning back and gesturing around the room vaguely. "Given all this, but yeah, I'm fine. Can you call him?"

"Yeah, I guess," Dean said, getting up and walking over to the windows. "Uh, Castiel. Cas? Got your ears on? We could use your input here. Trying to figure out what to do next?" He closed his eyes, concentrating on the angel. "Dean to Cas?"

He looked up, and Castiel stood in front of the fire, his hair tousled and his vessel sporting a five-o'clock shadow, still wearing the battered and bloodied trenchcoat he'd given back to him months ago. _Man, need to get him a new one_ , he thought distractedly. He couldn't recall seeing the angel look so ragged before.

"You could pray, Dean," the angel said tiredly.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "But this way's more fun."

"I don't have much time." Cas looked from Dean to Ellie. "What do you need to know?"

"What's the situation in Heaven, Cas?" Ellie asked. "Do you have enough angels to take on the horde?"

"With Michael, yes."

"Right." Dean glanced at Ellie and back to the angel. "Can you lift him out? Like you did Sam?"

"That was different." Castiel shook his head. "I was stronger then, Heaven was stronger. Michael is in Adam's physical body, I could – maybe – get him out, but not Adam and his soul as well – and for a war on this plane, he would need his vessel."

Dean turned away. _Not a fucking chance_ , he thought, knowing the angel could probably pluck that sentiment straight from his mind.

"How do we get in? The Cage is at the centre, isn't it? The Ninth level?" Ellie asked. "Can we get in using Moloch's gate?"

"Yes, the Cage is on the ninth level, but no, you cannot enter from this plane lower than the Adoian Baltim. You'll need Azazel's gate or the intermittent one on this country's west coast – it will take you to the fourth level. But I don't know that you'd make it to the Ninth level. Not now."

"Why can't we –?"

"Because you can't," Cas cut him off tersely. "Every plane – everything – has its rules, Dean. Everything is in balance. There are reasons that are not for us to know–"

"Blah blah blah," Dean muttered, throwing himself onto the sofa beside Ellie.

"It's not 'blah blah blah' –" the angel retorted.

"Why not now?" Ellie asked.

"Because the Fallen have Lucifer and his Throne. They have reign over their domain again. Because they are looking for something," Cas said, his brows drawing together.

"Fine," Dean said. "You're coming too, right?"

"No."

Ellie sighed, glancing at Dean. "We'll have to sneak through."

"Sneak?" He gave a strangled laugh. "Through Hell? To the Cage?"

"Once we're there, inside, we can open the Cage with the key, it'll let us out straight to this plane. But yeah, getting in – we can't fight our way through. So it's going to have to be … subtle."

"Subtle. That's hilarious." Looking from Ellie to the angel, he realised neither looked like they were joking. "Subtle?"

Cas shrugged. "She's right. We don't have the force to be able to break him out. And I don't have – I can't access – the power to go in and lift him myself," he said.

"If I go with you, the Fallen will know," he continued. "They're angels. They'll feel me. One or two humans, if you have luck on your side, your souls will go unnoticed. If you can move fast and keep out of sight, you should be able to make it. And yes, with the key, the Cage will open straight to this plane."

 _This was getting worse by the minute_ , Dean thought. He'd thought Cas'd been talking about getting their help to get Michael out – not going into Hell to do the whole goddamned job themselves – and the angel was talking to Ellie about this as if she was a given for the suicide mission.

"You're not going," he said to her, shooting a warning glance at Cas.

Her mouth twisted slightly; he wasn't sure if it was at what he'd said or the tone he'd used.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm the only one who's been in Hell enough times to know where I'm going and how to get there."

"Doesn't make any difference –"

"Are we finished? I have pressing business –" Castiel glanced uncomfortably from Ellie to Dean.

"No." Turning away, Ellie waved a hand at her computer. "What about the Others?"

The angel exhaled, his gaze dropping to the floor. "They outnumber the Watchers by ten to one, not counting the half-breeds. They are actively seeking an alliance with Lucifer and the Fallen, in return for their help in defeating the Host."

"Will Lucifer make a deal with them? To secure the surface?"

"I don't know. Possibly." Cas shook his head. "It can't have escaped him he's going to be a puppet in Hell, controlled by those he spent so many centuries torturing. He always was quick to see the main chance."

"What happened to him, Cas? Why did he lose his power?"

"I don't know that either," Cas admitted. "I tried to find out, while he was – inhabiting my vessel – attempting to invade my _self_. But – the impression I received suggested he doesn't know himself."

That didn't sound good either, Dean thought, watching Ellie glance away, her face thoughtful. He was starting to develop a reaction to that expression, he thought, that look she got when she had an idea she didn't think he'd like.

"Can you contact Penemue, Cas? Tell him where we are?"

"Yes." He nodded "Are you able to assist them?"

"I think so," Ellie said. "It'll depend on what kind of deal they're hoping to get."

"Yes," the angel said. He glanced back at Dean. "I'm sorry not to have been more help to you, but I must go."

The sound of wings and the faint scents of flowers and feathers filled the room for a heartbeat then faded away.

"Sorry isn't really cutting it anymore, Cas," Dean said, getting to his feet and walking to the cupboard at the side of the room. He picked up the bottle of whiskey and tipped an inch into a glass, tipping his head and swallowing it.

Putting the glass back on the sideboard, he turned around, his face expressionless as he looked at Ellie.

"Alright. Lemme have it."

"A series of agonising tugs, or one long, screaming rip?"

"One long rip," he said, making a face at the description.

"We need to get into Hell. Get Michael out. You and me, I think." She got to her feet and walked over to him. "Sam can take Marcus, Trent, Twist and Garth to help Penemue and his brothers. The Others will be looking for a Gate, something big to get leverage for a deal. If they are, I think they'll go to Wyoming, or maybe Bear River, in Utah."

He shook his head. They'd just gotten out of Hell. He wasn't going back in there with her again. "How about me and Sam go to Hell and get Michael out, and you stay here and direct operations with the Watchers and everyone else, without getting involved?"

There was practically zero chance of her agreeing, but he figured if he was negotiating, he'd start with the moon and work his way down.

"Do you know how to get to the Ninth Level? Do you know how to cross Adoian Baltim?"

Staring at her, his frustration started to rise. "I don't even know what you just said."

"Okay, then. So we're clear?"

"No. Hell, no."

There had to be a way, he thought. To get her to back down and give up. He hadn't found anything like that in the six years he'd known her, but that didn't mean he was going to throw in the towel without trying.

"You can draw us a map, you can tell us how to get through whatever it is," he said, hoping he sounded reasonable. "You don't have to be there."

She smiled at him ruefully. "That's a nice idea, but you know as well I do, maps are useless in that plane. I can't explain ahead of time the things that're there. Adoian Baltim – the abyss – the daeva that guard it – the Lake of Fire on its own is going to be just about impossible to cross and it takes a leap of faith –"

"There ya go," he interrupted. "You _can_ tell me about it. Besides, I looked up the levels, when Sam – uh, after Sam jumped. And you haven't been further in than the fourth level."

"From the fourth level, how are you going to get across the abyss?"

"I'll figure it out!"

"And once across, do you know how to get through the fifth level? Past the booby-traps and the mazes?" she persisted. "And how to cross the Lake of Fire? And get through the gate into the seventh level?"

"I'll read up," he said. "The books are …"

His argument fell apart as he realised unhappily he wasn't sure where the hundreds of books he'd collected in Cicero had gone. "I'll find them."

"We'll go in, and you won't need to," she said, stepping close. He looked down into her face as she slid her arms around him, tilting her head to meet his eyes. "Besides, if it comes to it, I'd rather die beside you."

"Don't." He closed his eyes at the images that came without warning. How'd it always come down to this? His father. His brother. Now, Ellie. All of 'em dying to throw themselves into the line of fire. "You're not going. There's no way."

"Really?"

The single word was as keen as a knife blade and he glared at her. If it turned into a war of words, he knew who'd come out on top.

"Not going where?"

In the doorway, Sam's gaze swivelled from Ellie to him and back, his brother's expression transforming from mild curiosity to cautious worry as he picked up their vibes. Not that they were all that hard to pick up, he thought.

"Not going to Hell. We can do it, you and me. Ellie's not going," Dean said, looking at Sam.

"Uh –"

"Sam, you'll be helping Penemue and the Watchers," Ellie said, walking back to the sofa and sitting down. "Dean and I can get Michael out of the Cage."

"Ellie, I said no."

"And you can say it again if you want to, it won't change a thing." She tapped a couple of keys on the laptop.

"You know ... uh … I have a thing … in … somewhere … else." Sam turned around and left the room.

"Sam –" Dean watched him go in disbelief. Damned if he'd take Sam's side the next time his brother asked for something, he fumed, swinging back around to look at Ellie.

"Why d'you have to make this so difficult?"

"I'm not the one making it difficult." She stared up at him, her face set. "You don't know anything about the archdemons or what you'll be facing; you don't know where you're going once you get in there or how to get from level to level. And if you think that it would be easier for me sitting here wondering if you're dead down there, then think again."

"Y'know, Sam and me, we've been through some pretty hard stuff –"

She rolled her eyes. "Are you trying to make me nuts?"

"No," he said, his brows pinching up. "I'm trying to make you see reason."

"That's funny," she shot back. "That's what I'm trying to do too!"

"It's not reasonable for you –"

"It's not reasonable for you either," she snapped. "You'll be going through the level you were –"

Abruptly, she stopped, her gaze falling to the laptop.

"Where I … was tortured?" he asked, forcing the words out. It was something he hadn't thought about. "Picked up the razor?"

"Yes."

"I can handle it."

"Not alone – and not with Sam," she said, lifting her head. "With someone you've already told, Dean. Someone you can bear to have see whatever comes back."

 _Low blow_ , he thought, turning away. If anything did come back – and after what'd happened on the third level, he couldn't bring himself to discount the possibility – there was no way he wanted his brother to see it. They were still too broken. Sam might try to be comforting, might try to ignore whatever weakness he saw, but he wouldn't forget it.

"Dean, either we go together, or I'll go alone. Those are the only choices you have."

He looked at her, hearing the implacability in her voice. She would go alone if he kept fighting her, he knew it. She knew how to get to a gate before him, get through it and find her way down to the level that held the devil's cage. She would leave him behind.

That scared him more than the thought of her going with him. How did she always manage to box him into a corner? He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe and she resisted his efforts at every opportunity.

"Why?"

"Because it has to be done and we can't walk away. I can't walk away. And I told you, if we don't make it, I'd rather be with you than safe – and alone."

"Yeah, well, I'd be happier if you were alive."

He turned away from her, walking out of the room, a stab of disappointment hitting him when he realised she wasn't going to follow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

 _ **1.30 a.m. August 3, 2012. Scotts Mill, Oregon**_

The small neighbourhood was a quiet one, the house set on its own a mile up a winding road through the edge of the state forest. Ellie woke as the pickup chugged up the dirt road and slowed to turn into the drive. She opened an eye and glanced at the clock. One-thirty.

The town was three miles away. It only had one bar, and that'd probably been closed by the time he'd left. Through the open window, she heard the distinctive clunk of the truck's door, and she rolled over, wondering if Dean had found answers wherever it was he'd gone, or if they'd be facing the same conversation in the morning.

Not like it wasn't due. Circumstances had put it off for a long time, but not any more.

Sam'd returned to the living room when he'd heard the pickup start up.

" _He take off to think about this?"_ he'd asked as he'd walked in. Looking up at him, she'd nodded.

 _"You're sure this is what you need to do?"_

" _If you know anyone else who knows Hell as well as I do, point them out,"_ she'd said, probably more harshly than was needed.

" _You know he's just trying to keep you and the baby safe?"_ he'd asked, and she'd sighed.

" _Of course I know that."_ Looking down at the computer, she'd added, _"I don't know why he thinks I'd be better protected without him, than with him."_

Sam's brow had furrowed up as he'd taken a seat on the other side of the low table from her. _"Come on, Ellie, you do know why – he couldn't protect Dad, couldn't protect me – he blames himself for our choices, as if he could've made us choose something else."_ He'd shaken his head. _"You know when I first realised that? Watching him with you."_

She hadn't understood what he'd meant.

" _I've never seen him as scared of anything as he is of losing you,"_ he'd clarified, his gaze on the table. _"Not when Meg took our dad; not when we faced Lucifer. The last few months – the last couple of years – he's changed a lot. He's had to. More than that, he's wanted to."_

" _You're making that sound like a bad thing, Sam."_

" _No,"_ he'd been quick to say, shaggy chestnut bangs flopping over his face. _"No, it's a great thing, but you know Dean; for him, it's a hard thing too."_

His gaze had flicked around the room, as if he could find the words more easily amidst the prosaic comforts of their temporary home. _"And one thing hasn't changed. He thinks he can't do his job if he has to worry about the person he loves being in the firing line."_

" _That's the way it is,"_ she'd said, defences rising. _"For me too."_

" _I know that,"_ Sam'd said. _"And you know that. But Dean doesn't want to hear it. Not yet."_

He'd been right, she thought, listening to the clump of boots ascending the stairs. There were things she could help him with … and there were things she couldn't. This was one of those things he needed to get clear for himself. By himself.

The bedroom door opened, then closed. She heard him walk around the bed, the mattress dipping on the other side as he sat down. There was a faint rustle and two heavy thumps as he unlaced and pulled off his boots, letting them drop to the floor, and the mattress bounced up again when he stood.

She wasn't going to let him go into Hell after Michael on his own, or even with Sam. He hadn't said anything about what he'd seen or felt when they'd been there, but she'd seen his face, closed up and hard as they'd made their way through the third level. The lower levels would be worse. Cas'd told her the angels had pulled Dean from the seventh level. Moloch's domain. If he couldn't talk to his brother of the memories that'd returned about being tortured for so long, how would he face dealing with worse ones?

Besides which, she thought, pulling the quilt more closely under her chin, he didn't know how to cross from one level to another. Every internal gateway in Hell was different. She'd never been beyond Adoian Baltim, the dividing chasm between the upper and lower levels of the Accursed Plane, but she'd studied everything she'd been able to find on every level over a period of years, memorised them until she could practically see the different facets of Hell in her mind's eye. She couldn't transfer that knowledge whole and complete to him with maps and notes. He needed her with him.

Softer thumps and a gentle tug of the covers lifting and the mattress dipped again, evenly this time along its length. For a long moment, he was still, lying on his back, she thought. Then he rolled onto his side, spooning up behind her, his skin warm against her from neck to knee. His arm slid over her hip and she heard his deep inhale close to her ear, the exhale fluttering against her neck.

"Ellie?" His voice was soft, very low, the brush of his lips against her skin sending a shiver through her. "You awake?"

"Yeah."

There wasn't any point to pretending otherwise. She couldn't sleep, not until they'd gotten some of this out.

"You mad at me?"

"No," she answered, biting her lip when she realised that wasn't quite right. "Yes. A little bit."

"Everything I ever wanted is right here," he said, his arms curling around her. "Tessa told me there were no second chances, but I got one and I don't want to –"

"You want me to change?" she asked. "Be someone I'm not? So you don't have to worry?"

His sigh ghosted over her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, lips thinning out at the injustice of the accusation. She couldn't take it back. Didn't want to, she realised. She loved him exactly as he was. She didn't want to change a thing. She'd wanted him to love her like that, as she was, no excuses or lies.

"I don't want to lose you," he answered, after a moment that felt like an hour.

"It's a risk we both face every day."

"I know that." His voice roughened as he added, "It gets more loaded when you want to get into Hell and free a goddamned archangel."

He had a point, she thought, but not really. What they did was what they did. She could've bought it a million times in a million ways and the job always held risk.

"I did this for a lot of years before I met you. I'm good at it, Dean."

"C'mon, you know that's not what this is," he said. His outgoing breath was filled with frustration, warm against her arm. "I don't – for a second – have any doubts about what you can do."

"Then why –?"

"It took us so fucking long to get here," he cut her off. "Don't you worry about losing this? Us?"

"Of course I do. You know I do," she said, her eyes screwing shut as an image of a rain-soaked street lit with neon bloomed behind the lids. "I can't change who I am, Dean. I won't. Not even for you."

"I don't want you to," he said. "This isn't about how you can take care of yourself, Ellie. It's not about how capable you are."

His cheek dropped to her shoulder, the prick of stubble against her skin. She felt his chest expand against her back as he pulled in a deep breath. "You asked me if I wanted to live, you remember?"

"Yeah."

How could she forget? He'd spent his life being ready to die, ready to put his life between those he loved and any threat. It was a different ballgame to want to live. A distinction she hadn't been sure he'd really made for himself, all those years.

"Yeah, well, I do," he said. "I was thinking, you know, when I left, about my family. About, how, uh, if my mother had just told my dad what was coming, maybe they could've protected each other. Or if even Dad had told me what he'd found about Sam, just trusted me with that, we could've found a different way."

Frowning, Ellie asked, "You think I'm not telling you everything?"

"No. Well, yeah," he said, the edge gone from his voice. "But that's not – look, uh - I just don't want that to start happening, uh, between us. I did it - do it - with Sam, trying to protect him - it nevers works."

They'd talked around this before, not really going into detail because there hadn't been a need to get too specific and neither had felt comfortable raising the spectres that haunted the times when they were apart. They could love each other, look out for each other, but with each new threat, each new danger, he'd have to wrestle with the same dilemma, the same desire to keep her out of it, away from harm. The problem was there was no place that was safe, that was away from the danger. Not in their life, and probably not in any other life either. It wasn't fate or kismet. It was fact.

"You ever read the Declaration of Independence?"

He tensed a little, clearly wondering about the change of subject.

She smiled, leaning back against his chest. "When I was thirteen, my school had a field trip to Washington, and we saw it. Read it. The class teacher was a keen patriot, proud of the history, and he made us think about what it said and that … it changed me, I guess. Gave me a reason to do what I do, maybe."

Closing her eyes, she could recall the passage as clearly now as when she'd first seen it, the memory sending a tingling charge through her chest.

"' _But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security_.'"

"The people with the ability to take action, also have the responsibility to take that action," Dean said.

"Yeah." She turned over slowly, within the curve of his arms, and looked into his eyes.

"My dad used to say that," he told her, his voice deepening with some memory. "Never mentioned where it came from."

"One day – soon – I'll be relying on you to protect me, to protect us –" She slid her hand down between them and curled it protectively over the shallow bulge of her stomach. "– because I won't be able to."

* * *

Dean drew in a deep breath, a frisson of fear racing through his nervous system at her words. She was right.

He didn't want her to change. Didn't want her to be someone else, even if it'd make it easier or safer. Every time he looked at her, heard her voice, felt her touch, something resonated in him, somewhere down deep and that'd always felt right. Real.

 _Essential_.

He didn't want to lose her but asking her to be something other than who she was would have the same result.

In a couple of months, she wouldn't be able to protect herself, not the way she could now. He found the thought more disturbing than the idea of her going into Hell. It would all be on him.

If they made it through the next couple of weeks, he added silently to himself. The only chance of them doing that, getting into Hell and getting Michael out was gonna be on her. Her knowledge. Her skills. There wasn't a snowballs' chance he could bone up on everything she knew in the time he had, and even if he could, he acknowledged reluctantly, he didn't want to go in there without her. She'd been right about that, too. He couldn't face the thought of falling apart in front of his brother. He wasn't real keen on the idea of doing it in front of her, either, but she'd understand, she'd know what was happening. Sam wouldn't. And he couldn't tell him.

She thought along lines that never occurred to him. Came up with solutions that'd gotten them out of trouble more than once. Another thing he loved about her. Another thing that couldn't be replicated with anyone else. Not even his brother. Especially not his brother, he thought. He and Sam knew each other's moves; the way they thought. Sam didn't springboard his ideas the way Ellie did. And the job was going to need that.

It didn't change the fact that she'd be going into the lowest levels of Hell to find an archangel who was probably pissed to max volume about being trapped there for the last three years. Or three hundred and sixty years, give or take, in Hell's time.

"It scares the crap outta me, thinking about losing you," he said simply.

"You think I don't feel the same way?" she asked, tucking her head against his shoulder. "You can't think about it. You can't give it room."

"Is that what you do?"

He did that, to a certain degree, he thought. Not enough to stop the adrenalin flowing pretty constantly. He didn't know if he could shut it down far enough.

"When we're working, yes," she said. "If I let those thoughts in, I'd be too worried about you to do my job. I'd make a mistake and get myself killed. Or you."

Closing his eyes, he thought back to the warehouse. He'd been aware of her, as he'd always been aware of Sam. Or his father. On high alert, ready to jump in between either one of them and any potential threat.

It was tiring. Energy-consuming. Twice, he knew for sure, he could've put them in jeopardy because he'd been thinking of their safety instead of thinking of what he had to do to get the job done. She hadn't remarked on those times. She knew what he'd been thinking. But he understood why she wasn't prepared to let him go into Hell with Sam. How could he retrain himself to not do that? Protecting those he loved had been ingrained so deeply he could never shut it entirely out.

"When you're work on your own, how do you face the monsters?"

On his own, it was easy. "I, uh, don't think about what might happen, only what I have to do."

"Yes."

"I don't know if I can do that with you." He looked down at her, touching her face lightly, his fingertip following the curve of her brow, feeling the small scar that ran across it. "I haven't had much luck doing it even with Sam."

"You have to." She shifted against him, moving up slightly and he felt a rush of heat where her skin grazed over him. "You have to focus on what you have to do, and lock everything else down."

"This another part of that mental mumbo-jumbo you can't teach me in five minutes?"

Her cheek lifted against his neck. "Yeah, I guess it is. It's just a state of mind. You have to learn to dismiss everything that's not relevant."

Her hand slid down his chest, smoothing over his hip to his flank, and his breath caught in his throat. "Like – uh – focussing on a conversation no matter what else – uh – is going on?"

"Exactly." Her fingers slipped back up his thigh, following the curve to the inside, slowing down as she drew her hand up.

"Uh … huh … I don't think I can shut that out either." He struggled to get the words out as sensation swamped him.

"Try harder." She leaned close to him, her breath on his lips. "Much harder."

He closed his eyes and dragged in a deep breath, forcing his physical senses away from his thoughts, letting his body react without it fogging his mind. He knew how to shut away pain. Knew how to ignore distraction. Had been able to control his reactions to physical sensation … at least, he had before … before her. It was the emotional reactions he couldn't seem to ignore.

It was hard, with what she was doing to him; it was damned near impossible. He knew how it could be done, how he could do it, isolating each thought, keeping things separate in his mind, in his body. Her fingers changed position and he groaned, his concentration fragmenting.

"Uh, oh … not fair –"

"You're not doing too badly," she said, grinning at him. "Just need some more practice."

"Uh – no – gimme a second."

"Won't have a second in the field." Her lips feathered over his. "Gotta roll with whatever's happening."

"Good idea," he said, rolling over her, holding his weight above her on one arm.

"Hey!"

He smiled and moved his hand down.

"How 'bout … we see how well you do at this?"

* * *

 _ **8.30 a.m. August 3, 2012.**_

"Coffee," Dean said through a jaw-popping yawn as he walked into the kitchen. Sam glanced around, and nodded at the fresh pot on the counter.

"You have trouble sleeping?" he asked, watching his brother pour himself a mug of the fragrant brew, his eyes barely open.

"Yeah, loads of trouble," Dean said. His lids dropped closed and his mouth curled up into a smug grin as he lifted the cup. "Got about an hour."

Sam wrinkled his nose. "TMI."

"Hey, you asked."

"I won't be doing that again," Sam muttered. "Ellie up?"

His brother nodded as he inhaled his coffee. "Be down in a minute."

"You two going to get Michael?"

Dean finished the cup and turned back to the pot to pour a second. "Mmm, looks like."

Not exactly happy about it, Sam thought, watching him, but not completely opposed either.

"You alright with that?"

Turning back, Dean leaned against the counter and stared into his cup. "Not really, but it's not like I got much choice."

"I could come with?" Sam suggested. "Another pair of hands, eyes?"

His brother shook his head. "S'not really the problem," he said, lifting his gaze and meeting Sam's eyes. "Two's gonna sneak in easier than three, and the only shot we have is getting in and out without being seen. I – uh – just –"

Dean waved a hand around in no particular direction as he trailed off, and Sam nodded. His brother's shorthand for being worried without having a way to deal with it.

"If you're distracted –?"

"Oh, I'll be on the ball," Dean snorted. "Nothing but."

"What's for breakfast?"

Both men turned around as Ellie walked into the kitchen. From the corner of his eye, Sam saw his brother's expression brighten and relax at the same time, the seeming contradiction typical of Dean.

"Uh, toast, unless you feel like cooking?" Sam said.

"Well, I feel like eating," Ellie hedged, walking past him to the counter and turning on the electric kettle. She took a mug down from the cupboard and dropped a tea-bag into it.

"What exactly are we supposed to do to help the Watchers?" Sam asked, moving out of her way as she moved around the kitchen, collecting pans, egg and bacon, flour and milk.

"They want – they need – leverage against the Fallen," she said, flicking on the stove top and breaking eggs quickly into a bowl. Sam felt his brows rise as she passed it to his brother. "And something pretty tangible – not just some airy-fairy promise of help against Heaven."

"Like what?"

"Maybe a key," she said, laying out strips of bacon on the broiler. "To a Gate."

Sam looked at Dean, whose mouth had fallen open. "Uh, we might need that."

"Oh, we definitely will, and I wouldn't be inclined to give it to them," she said, taking a bowl from under the stove and spooning flour, salt and sugar into it. She added milk. "But it sure makes nice bait."

"Why?" Sam asked, taking the bowl from her and beating the batter into a froth.

"Being able to open a Gate – that Gate – would give a demon army a big advantage. It might prove their loyalty to the archdemons. Not much else is likely to do that."

"So … we offer them the keys to the kingdom and … what?" Dean cocked a brow at her.

"Trap them?" Sam asked, setting the bowl down and pulling out a clean pan. He added butter to the pan and set it on the stove. "Where? How?"

"Angels and nephilim have no problem crossing the iron rails into the Devil's Gate pentacle. But they do have a thing about hallowed ground. They won't kill on it," she told them, turning the crisp bacon over. "There are five churches within the pentacle. The one closest to the Gate happens to sit in a small, tight valley."

"Back to Sunrise?" Dean shook the pan full of eggs. He added salt and pepper, stirring it again.

"So far, it's looking the best site."

"How do we let them know about the gun?" Tipping the mixture into the pan and tilting the pan over the heat, Sam wondered about the iron-bound pentacle. He'd only seen it in daylight once, and even that'd been just on dusk. He didn't remember looking at the churches, just the graveyard. "They're not going to believe the Watchers have the key and are willing to hand it over?"

"No, I doubt they're that dumb," Ellie said, draining the bacon strips on a paper-covered plate and getting another three plates down from the cupboard. "I thought Cas might be able to help there. Sounds like he has his pick of possible renegade angels to hand."

Dean gave the eggs a final stir and tipped them onto the plates. "You want me to call him again?"

"After we eat, and figure out the best way to lay this out." Ellie added the bacon to the plates and passed Sam a clean plate.

Flipping another pancake, Sam asked, "When do the Watchers arrive?"

Glancing at her watch, Ellie said, "Three hours."

Garth, Twist, Trent and himself, Sam thought, plus Penemue and however many of his brothers and kids they'd brought. Against how many?

"How many are we up against?" He looked from Dean to Ellie as he poured more mixture into the pan.

Dean took his frying pan to the sink. "Cas said ten to one."

"What? How many Watchers are there?"

"Eleven," Ellie answered, pulling cutlery from a drawer. "There's somewhere between ninety and a hundred of the Others."

Flipping the last pancake, Sam watched it brown and slid it onto the stack. Even with superior position and weapons, the odds were too great, he thought.

"That's a big ask, Ellie," he said, turning off the stove and carrying the pan to the sink.

Ellie nodded. "I know. Means we have to be smarter, sneakier, and ignore the Marquess of Queensbury rules."

Picking up his plate, he followed his brother and Ellie to the dining room table. Ellie left the cutlery and returned to the kitchen for butter, ketchup and maple syrup, setting them out on the table before sitting down.

"You want an ambush," Dean said, taking a pancake and adding it to his plate. "High ground. A bottleneck. Someplace crossfire works for us but not them and we can even the odds."

"That's what I want," Ellie agreed, piling egg on top of her bacon. "I had a brief look at the maps last night. There's a section of the road that looks like it might work. It leads past the south-eastern church on the way to Colt's cemetery."

"But we can't kill them," Sam objected.

"Not outright, not with rifles, no," Ellie agreed. "But they will go down under fire, and once they're on the ground, they'll be incapacitated long enough to cut out their hearts."

Sam looked down at the remains of his breakfast and pushed it aside, his face screwing up. Dean reached across the table and snagged the unwanted plate, tipping the leftover pancake and bacon onto his.

"Take more than rifles, Ellie," Dean said, around a mouthful. He swallowed and gave Sam a measured look. "You'll need some mines. Something you can set off once they hit the right place."

Sam nodded. "Redrock?"

"Yeah, I think he stashed some there." Dean grinned around his next forkload.

Sam knew he was remembering the storage unit. He could still picture his brother's expression when they'd found that place, a mix of wary astonishment and little-boy glee at the sheer wealth of explosives there. Shelving had run right around the narrow room, floor-to-ceiling, stacked with cases of claymores, boxes of detonators and C4 in metal cases.

"Redrock?" Ellie got up, taking her empty plate and Sam's to the kitchen. She filled her cup with hot water, poured fresh coffees for the brothers and brought them back to the table.

"Our dad had storage units all over the country," Sam explained. "Some of them were designated for special things."

"Redrock, Idaho, has mines. Explosives," Dean said, washing the last of his food down with the fresh coffee. "I think Caleb picked up most of it for Dad. Had a buddy at some military depot."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Dean leaned over the table, his gaze moving slowly over the contour map laid out there.

"Those churches haven't been used in a hundred and fifty years," he asked. "They gonna keep everyone safe?"

"Hallowed ground is hallowed ground." Sam moved the magnifying lens over the map, leaning across from the other side of the table. "Once it's been blessed and consecrated it doesn't have an expiry date."

"It's not the same church Twist and Marcus used to wait out Crowley, is it?" Ellie sat at the end of the table, studying the zoomed-in satellite image on her laptop.

"No." Sam lifted his head and blinked at the change in focus. "That was the southern church."

In the kitchen, the coffee pot burbled and hissed and Dean turned away from the table, picking up their empty cups. He set them down on the counter and looked at bowl of tea-bags next to the electric jug.

"You sure you don't want a coffee?" he asked Ellie, nose wrinkling as he picked up a bag and took a cautious sniff.

"Is that offending your delicate sensibilities?"

"Uh, no," he said, hearing Sam's snort. "Just checkin'."

"It's calming, full of vitamins and tastes great, Dean."

"Sure it does." He dropped the bag into her empty cup and poured water over it. "Right."

Pouring out fresh cups for himself and Sam, he watched the hot water turn a deep red. "Looks like pig's blood."

"Just leave the bag in until it's nearly black," Ellie said.

He shrugged and picked up the coffees, returning to the table to pass Sam his cup and sitting down with his own.

"What about us? Where're we going in?"

"Devil's Gate Reservoir, I think. Pasadena." Ellie looked up from the laptop. "It's closer. Cas said it would let us into the fourth level."

The gate where Bill Harvelle had been killed, he remembered. "Jim's journal said it wasn't always open."

She nodded. "I've got a ritual that'll open it."

Getting to her feet, she walked to the kitchen and pulled the bag from her cup. "That's not the main problem."

 _No_ , Dean thought. The main problem was he was gonna have to talk to Death and ask if he could borrow his ring again.

"You've still got the summoning?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. The fine parchment scroll Crowley'd handed over reluctantly was still in its wrapping of silk, at the bottom of his duffel.

"When do you want to do it?"

"Uh, we got everything we need? Maybe we oughta check if we're out of something – uh - vital?" He didn't want to summon Death again. "We – uh – needed some funky crap that was hard to get hold of last time –"

 _You attempt to bind me again and you'll be dead before you start_ , the entity'd told him.

Ellie lifted a brow. "What's wrong?"

"Uh … last time we bound him –"

Sam's gaze swung around. "He said he'd kill us."

"Good thing we're not trying to bind him, then, isn't it?" Ellie said. "We won't be using the complete ritual you got from Crowley."

"We won't?"

"No," she said, blowing on her tea as she carried it back to the table. "Just the beginning part of it. This is just a – a request – to talk."

"Oh."

The temperature in the room dropped suddenly. Dean shivered as Bobby manifested next to the table.

"You ever going to invite me to your pow-wows or am I just supposed to keep eavesdropping?" he asked sourly.

"You have a standing invitation, Bobby." Ellie drank her tea quickly before the ghost could pull all the heat from it.

"Bobby, you remember Dad leaving a stash of mines in his storage units?" Dean asked.

"Uh huh. Idaho. Redrock, I seem to recall. And he had a unit somewhere outside Seattle." He looked over the table at the map, pushing his cap back and peering down at the inverted pentacle of Colt's churches. "Seems like old times."

"Yeah, let's hope this goes better than that did." Sam glanced at his brother.

Dean smiled. "I'm still going back to Hell, Sam."

* * *

 _ **10.30 a.m. August 4, 2012.**_

Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves or grass in the big garden behind the house. In full canopy, the massive oak, maple and aspens cast deep pools of black shade, the temperatures there almost five degrees less than in the bright sunshine.

Ellie stood by the edge of the long, weathered picnic table, her gaze moving around at the clusters of people that filled the yard. Didn't look so odd, she thought, just a friendly gathering on a hot summer's afternoon. If you didn't look too closely.

The Watchers had arrived the day before, taking up accommodation in the town. Penemue and Baraquiel were staying here, the two fallen looking out of place in their jeans and casual shirts, long hair tied back. The rest of their brothers, and the adult children who'd accompanied them, might've been able to blend in singly, but in a group, they stood out. Tall, beautiful, graceful, even the casual, Westernised clothing couldn't hide their differences.

"Ellie? Can I talk to you?" Tricia said, coming up behind her.

"Sure," she said, turning and gesturing to the long bench next to the table. "What's going on?"

"I want to do this," Tricia said, dropping to the bench seat. "You know I'm capable, and I want in."

Taking a seat opposite, Ellie studied her. "It won't bring him back."

"I know that," the other woman grimaced, her gaze cutting away. "That's not why I'm volunteering."

"You talk to Sam about this?" Ellie asked.

"Sam is the problem," Tricia said.

"It's his gig, Trish," Ellie pointed out.

"And he's outnumbered, probably outgunned," Tricia argued. "You know what I can do."

"You've been out of this game for a long time."

"Long range shooting isn't something you just forget." Tricia's gaze returned to her. "I'm not going back to Chicago."

"Why?"

"You said it yourself," Tricia said. "This is war. What good is it for me to pretend it's not happening? Get people functioning only for them to die in a month or six when it all goes to hell? Literally?"

Sam'd made his feelings clear enough on the subject, Ellie recalled with an internal wince. He didn't want Tricia risking her life. She ducked her head, wondering if Trish knew the extent of his feelings about her. For her.

"I'll, um, talk to him, alright?" she said, wondering if it would make a difference. "But it's his call."

"Alright," Tricia agreed unwillingly, her gaze dipping for a moment then returning to her. "How did you do it? With Dean?"

"Do what?"

"Make him understand what you need to do?" Tricia said, a short, choppy gesture showing her frustration. She shook her head. "He backs you up, every time. Dad noticed it too, you know. Said it wasn't Dean's rep to do that."

"Um, yeah. Well, we're still negotiating that bit," Ellie hedged, the last few days' conversations too vivid. "Is there something between you and Sam? More importantly, do you want there to be?"

"I don't know," Tricia said, running a hand through her hair and pushing it back from her face. "There was – I guess there is – but this – it's more important, right now."

"Sam doesn't think so?"

"No," she said with a sigh. "I guess not."

"Trish, I'll talk to him, alright?" Ellie said, leaning forward. "But you need to get that stuff straight between you, preferably before you go. There's a strain when it's not clear, and that strain can have an impact when it's least wanted."

Tricia nodded. "I know."

She looked up, her gaze slipping past Ellie. Someone behind her, Ellie thought. Turning around, she saw Penemue walking toward them.

"He's a Watcher?" Tricia asked.

Getting to her feet as the fallen angel approached, Ellie said, "Yeah. Uh, Penemue, this is Tricia Milton. Trish, Penemue, of the _Irin We-Qadishin_."

The fallen angel inclined his head, his bright blue gaze meeting Tricia's.

"You are almost tall enough to be considered nephilim, Miss Milton," Penemue said.

"My mother's genes," Tricia answered, taking his offered hand. "I understand that rules me out."

"Not in all cases," the Watcher said, smiling. "You are to fight with us?"

"I hope so." Tricia glanced at Ellie. "It's been a while since I've done this kind of work."

"Oh?" Penemue glanced at Ellie, then looked back at the young woman in front of him. "What have you been doing more recently?"

"I'm a physiotherapist," Tricia said, her gaze dropping to her hand, still held in the Watcher's grip. "I help people to recover from trauma and injury."

"A healer?" Penemue's gaze fell at the same time. "The world needs its healers, Miss Milton. There is much to be healed."

"Oh, well, I don't plan on giving that up for good," she said, a faint line of pink rising from her shirt collar. _And what was that about_ , Ellie wondered?

"I'm glad to hear that."

The Watcher released her hand and Tricia nodded as she took a small step backward. "Ellie, if you could talk to Sam, and um, let him know I won't be taking 'no' for an answer?"

"Trish, I'll try," Ellie said. She glanced at the Watcher standing beside her. His gaze remained on Tricia as she turned away and walked toward the house.

"Did you want to talk about something?" she prompted, pushing her curiosity about the man's interest aside. The Watcher had been a friend for a long time, and was still as opaque to her as when she'd met him.

Penemue turned to her, his face as smooth and expressionless as she'd expected.

"Yes," he said. "You have a plan?"

She nodded. "Cas asked Danyael to contact the Others."

"With news of a key to one of the Major Gates," Penemue said. "I heard."

"Danyael will tell them of a group of hunters." She looked up at him, the corner of her mouth tucking in. "Unscrupulous. Wanting to make a deal."

"They are angels. Not demons," he said, shaking his head. "They don't make deals and they couldn't keep one, even if they did."

"True. But do they know that humans know that?" She shrugged. ""We'll know in a day or two if the bait's been taken."

"And then?"

"Sam told you about Sunrise?" she asked.

He nodded. "The iron will not affect them."

"Doesn't need to. Sam and a couple of other hunters will be waiting for them in the Church. You, your brothers, the nephilim and the rest of the hunters will be on the slopes of the valley, overlooking the only road in."

"And we use your weapons to attack?" he asked, his mouth turning down. "Those won't kill them."

"No," Ellie agreed. "The mines will do a certain amount of damage, disrupt whatever they had planned. The crossfire across the valley, in front of the church, should even the numbers. Sam will have decide exactly how it all goes down on the spot." She lifted a brow. "Even you aren't likely to get up straight away after taking multiple bullets, Penemue. There'll be time enough to cut out their hearts."

"I suppose it has the advantage of being simple." Penemue looked around at the people that filled the garden. "We're outnumbered almost ten to one, you know that?"

"Yeah, I know," she said. "That's why I thought an ambush would be better than a frontal assault."

His gaze returned to her. "This isn't your war, Ellie. You could leave – stay safe. Have your child and be with the man you love."

The smile she gave him was humourless and cold. "Until they find us and kill us?" She shook her head. "No, it is our war. This is our world. We'll fight."

He nodded, his shoulders dropping a little. "The key will not be handed over to the Others?"

"No," Ellie said. "It's not just a key. It's also a weapon. A powerful one. It won't kill Lucifer, and there are a few other things it will not kill, but I somehow doubt the fallen are on that list."

Sam had told her of the conversation with Lucifer about the gun. Jesse was another of those five things. She wondered who or what else was immune.

The Watcher was looking at her, his expression concerned. "You are taking it into Hell with you?"

"No." She shook her head. "We'll be doing our utmost to avoid being noticed at all. Sam will have the gun. It's a single action revolver and it only holds five rounds, but he's a good shot. He won't miss if he gets the chance. We've been working on a reloader. It'll help with evening the odds."

"You believe the Others will want this key, even knowing it could be a trap?"

"I think they need something big to convince the Fallen of their intentions," she said. "Being able to open a Gate of that power should be irresistible."

"I believe so too." The Watcher turned to look around the garden. "You trust these people?"

"With my life," she told him. "They're risking everything to help us with Lucifer. They _have_ risked their lives to do that."

"An attempt that failed," Penemue remarked.

"Meg erased her wardings and called the archdemons," Ellie said. "Lucifer convinced her. If I'd thought it was even a possibility, I never would've suggested we try to trap her."

"Lucifer is persuasive."

"Yeah," she agreed. "And they have him now."

The devil's last comment returned, sending a shiver snaking down her spine. Had the taunt been for her? For Dean? She'd never know, she thought.

"You and Dean will be leaving soon?" The Watcher's question brought her back to the present.

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "Straight after you, in fact. Sam's running this show, Pen. Whatever you need, you can talk to him."

Penemue folded his arms over his chest. "He seems young. Even for a human. Does he have the experience that's needed?"

"Yeah, he knows what he's doing." She followed his glance across the garden. Sam was talking to Trent and Twist. "And he listens to advice."

"That's something." He looked down at her. "Three thousand years I've been here; I do have some insights."

She smiled. "Your wisdom and experience have always been appreciated, Pen."

He snorted. "You think flattery works on me?"

"Doesn't hurt, does it?" She waved a hand toward the youngest Winchester. "Go quiz him if you don't believe me. We'll have lunch in half an hour, and then get into the nitty-gritty."

"Nitty-gritty?"

"Details," she amended. "And introductions."

"How long will it take to get to this place?"

"A day and a half," she said. "We've got vehicles ready. There'll be room for everyone."

* * *

 _ **3\. 15 p.m.**_

Sam frowned at the back of the Jeep, now crowded with boxes of mines and detonators. Twist's pickup was parked to his left, the red truck's tray holding eight reinforced plastic and steel cases with the M-40s, boxes of ammunition snugged in beside them. He didn't want to think about what might happen if the hunter was pulled over on their way to Wyoming.

"Is there anything we can do to help?"

The voice was a pleasant tenor, warm and clear, coming from behind his right shoulder and he swung around to see Idan and Adina standing there.

The nephilim, the son of Shamsiel and daughter of Baraquiel respectively, were both tall, an inch or so taller than him. It was a disorienting feeling to be looking up, however slightly, at someone else. Idan was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, his long, blue-black hair held back in a single braid; Adina, small-breasted and athletic-looking, her oval face framed by long, straight, reddish-blonde hair. Both had the classical bone structure and flawless skin of their heritage; Idan's olive-toned, Adina's Celtic fair. They were surreally beautiful, he thought, trying not to stare.

"Uh, yeah," he said, waving a hand at the truck and the pile of still-unloaded crates on the ground. "Those need to go into the troop."

They nodded and went to pick up a crate each, lifting the hundred pound crates easily and carrying them to the ex-Army vehicle.

"No question as to where the legends of elves came from, is there?"

He started, turning to see Tricia beside him, her gaze on the nephilim.

"Huh, yeah," Sam said. There were – fantasy aside – plenty of legends based on tall, beautiful and, more often than not, malicious or deadly beings that didn't seem quite human.

As he looked at her, they ran through his mind, the women he'd known, had loved or felt something for – Jess and Sara, Madison and even Ruby, in those painful days when his brother had been in Hell and he'd been lost – women he'd known and had gifted with pain or death. There was something of each in the woman in front of him and, at the same time, she was completely different from each of them as they from each other. Not Jess' joyful innocence, or Sara's frightened optimism. Not Madison's hope-less strength or Ruby's needful hunger.

Tricia wasn't a hunter, though she'd been raised in the life. She knew them, knew the dark side and the loss that came with it, he thought. As with the children of the fallen angels, he didn't have to adjust his eyeline much to meet her gaze. She was maybe an inch or two taller than Jess'd been. Her face was calm, her expression determined. Not masking fear. Understanding it and putting it aside.

She was here to talk about what Ellie'd button-holed him after lunch, he knew, wincing inwardly at the memory of that conversation. He'd developed new sympathy for his older brother during that conversation; the red-haired hunter'd been reasonable, persuasive, logical and relentless, and finally he'd given up, unable to come up with the right arguments to stick to his guns about Tricia. He hadn't wanted to admit it was mainly his emotions behind his reluctance to include her.

"I'm not looking for revenge or closure or any of those things, Sam," Tricia said, her voice as steady and direct as her gaze. "It's not a suicidal tendency, not even a homicidal one."

"You have a good life," he parried. "Why throw it away? You help people."

She turned her head, her gaze sweeping along the street. "My dad used to say that most people never get the opportunity to do something heroic," she said. "Or even to take a stand when it matters. He said they never got to know who they really were."

When she glanced back at him, he shivered inwardly as he saw something like a plea in her eyes. "I don't want to feel like I hid away, like some frightened kid, when the chance to do something that might make a difference came along."

"You could be killed, trying to make a difference," Sam told her, his brow wrinkling up, trying to ignore the impact of the fleeting plea he'd seen. That wasn't playing fair. "And all those people you could've been helping will have to live their lives without your work."

"I could die in Wyoming," she acknowledged readily. "There are a lot of people who will step in to take my place – in Chicago, or Boston or New York or wherever," she added. "There isn't anyone who'll believe in this fight and step in here."

"We don't need you that bad," he said, his gaze falling as the words slipped from his mouth. He hadn't meant to say it like that.

"You do, you know," she said, smiling at him. "Didn't Ellie tell you? I'm a great shot with an M-40."

He lifted his head, his mouth curling up involuntarily. "Can you prove it?"

"Anytime, anywhere."

"Gonna hold you to that. If you're that good, that's one thing. If you're not, you agree to sit it out in a motel in the town?" he told her, swallowing against the odd surge of emotion filling his chest.

"Deal."

"You – uh – going to ride with Marcus?" He looked down the quiet street, wondering where the older hunter's car was parked.

"No," she said. "I came over to ask if I could ride with you."

"Uh … oh ..." He hadn't been expecting that and his brain didn't seem to know what to do with it. "Sure. Yeah. Okay."

"I'll get my stuff," she said.

Watching her turn and walk away, he told himself it was a bad idea. A part of Ellie's arguments had been that Tricia had hunted with her father through her teenage years, only quitting when she'd started college, so it wasn't as if she didn't have experience.

It didn't matter, he knew. A few years out of the game meant slower reflexes, the instinctive reactions blunted without regular use. He should've been trying to work out a good reason to give her, a fool-proof way to put her off.

He found his heart wasn't in it. He was kind of looking forward to having her sitting next to him for the trip to Sunrise.

* * *

 _ **5.30 a.m. August 5, 2012.**_

"They all gone?" Dean asked, glancing over his shoulder as Ellie walked into the big double garage.

"Yeah," she said. "They should have plenty of time to set up."

He nodded, transferring the contents of his black gear bag to the Army pack. It wasn't as roomy and he had to pick and choose what he was taking, but he'd need his hands free.

"Last time I used one of these was for training," he told her, settling the Benelli and the sawn-off upright against the frame.

"Forty pounds and running uphill?" she asked, stopping beside him.

"In summer," he added, a smile lifting one side of his mouth. He could still feel the wound on the side of his head, but it wasn't hurting. "In New Mexico."

"Now you're just trying to impress me."

"That's some other loser you're thinkin' of," he told her loftily. "You're already impressed."

"Some _other_ loser?" Ellie arched a brow at him, the corner of her mouth tucking in.

He frowned, replaying the words. "Slip of the tongue. Some other dude."

"Slip of some kind," she agreed, the smile widening as she turned to the long work bench against the wall.

On the bench, a small, graceful recurve bow lay with a quiver full of arrows. The pale wood of the shafts was palo santo, he knew. Each head was iron, cold-forged and barbed. Something for the daeva that guarded the abyss, she'd told him. Beside the bow, six bottles filled with a foul-looking greenish-black gloop were also for the daeva. Ellie and Bobby'd concocted the stuff the previous evening, stinking out the basement completely.

Another three bottles were filled with holy oil, something the Watcher'd brought with him. Instead of the usual heavy ceramic, they were glass. Holy molotovs, she'd said. In the hopefully unlikely event they ran into an arch down there.

His stomach fluttered. He'd found some of the books Katherine had given him, boxed up with the selection Ellie'd brought from the cabin. _Gradus et Portas Infernalis_ was the one he'd remembered, the one that'd told him about the levels and doorways of Hell. Skimming through it over the past two nights, he'd reached the unpalatable conclusion that she'd been right. The broad strokes were there, but not enough detail. Not to let him figure out how to get through on his own.

Cas'd dropped by again, and sitting in the house's warm living room, listening to the angel and Ellie discussing the possible routes, the transdimensional doorways and what they would see on each level, had had the taste of a nightmare, disorienting in its surrealism. The angel'd thrown worried looks at him when they'd been discussing the seventh level. He knew why. The seventh level was the one where his soul had been when Cas'd pulled him free. The memories were there, had been pressing against his walls but the discussion had mainly made him aware he didn't really remember the level.

Only the table.

The demon.

The souls.

He shunted aside the tendrils of memory that even thinking near it brought and shoved the boxes of consecrated iron-and-salt round into the pack.

"You okay?" Ellie asked, glancing at him.

He nodded. "You get the location of the gate?"

He knew it was in Pasadena, someplace off the freeway. The demon they'd interrogated in '07 had told them that. Ellie'd dug out Jim Murphy's journals again and re-read the account his father had given the priest. The hunt that'd killed Bill Harvelle. He'd read through them again as well, not knowing what he was looking for. Jim's account of Bill's death had been added to by Bobby, sometime in 2010. The dry words couldn't hide the old man's regret at pushing at a man who'd been too close to the edge. When they got back, he wanted to talk to Bobby about it.

"Yeah. I checked your father's coordinates against the satellite images. It's right next to one of the storm channel drains," she said as she looked over the equipment on the bench, adding, "It's going to be a one-way trip for the vehicle. We need to find something disposable."

He'd figured that. "We can change in Redmond. Grab something from the lot at the airport."

"Alright." She picked up squares of velvet and silk and started wrapping the bottles, tucking them into her pack. "Do you want to do the drive in one day and find a place to crash tonight, or break it up early and get into LA in the morning?"

"Uh, break it up early," he said. Even along the 5, it was an easy twelve hours. Taking four hour shifts behind the wheel, they'd both be tired by the time they hit the city. "Could stop for the night in Castaic?"

She laughed. "Let's save the James Dean tour for another time."

"There's Magic Mountain," he said. "That'd take our minds off what we're about to do?"

"I'm thinking Kettleman," Ellie said. "It's about ten hours. We'll be there around sundown."

"Hey, if you don't want have to fun …"

"Going into Hell and rescuing an archangel is about all the fun I can stand for the moment," she said, adding after a moment's thought, "Besides, I'm betting you like _Intimidator_ more than _Escape from Krypton_."

"Got me," he admitted, thinking of the low-to-the-ground banking turns of the state-of-the-art roller-coaster. "I could stand to do something not related to Hell, demons, monsters, angels and war on earth sometime in the not too distant future."

"So, I gotta know, how it is you like roller-coasters, but hate flying?"

"I'm on the ground on the roller-coaster," he protested, reconsidering that as memories flashed through his mind. "Some of the time."

"It's still high."

"Yeah." He considered that, giving her a shrug. "I got no clue."

"Could you pass me that bag?" Ellie asked, setting the bow and quiver into the pack.

Turning, he reached for the nondescript hessian bag she was looking at and picked it up. The objects inside it moved together, the bag heavy. "What's this?"

"Alternative light source."

"For where?" he asked. Hell wasn't dark. Creepy. Forbidding. Noxious as a city dump in high summer, but not dark.

"The abyss," she said. "It's pitch black and the stairs are steep."

The more he heard about the chasm separating the upper and lower levels, the less he wanted to see it.

"Remind me why we aren't taking the Colt again?"

"You mean aside from Sam needing it to verify his story with the Others?"

"Yeah."

"Because it holds five bullets, if you're playing it safe with the single action, and there're six archdemons," she said. "If we used the Colt, even once in Hell, it would be a demon magnet. And the reloader's still not finished."

"I'm fast."

"Not faster than thought," she said with a smile. "We don't want to attract attention."

"You can't always get what you want."

"Well, we'll have to be careful," she said. "And we just might get what we need."

* * *

 _ **8.30 a.m. I-5 California**_

In true Californian style, the weather changed as soon as they turned onto the 5. Blue skies stretched out to every side, the grey cloud cover left behind and the summer-browned countryside lit up by sunshine. Dean was thankful the ride he'd stolen had air-con as the day heated up.

They didn't talk about the job as the scenery flashed past, or their chances or the myriad possibilities governing success or failure. Instead, they talked about Sam, Dean offering Ellie odds his little brother wouldn't hit on Tricia on the long drive to Wyoming; and about Cas, exchanging speculations on what the angel could do about the mess he'd made of Heaven. They talked about the towns they passed through; about their childhood memories and the hunts that'd held something different, funny or interesting; they talked about music and movies and books. They talked about anything that came to mind that was rooted in the mundane, the everyday.

It was, Dean thought, as he screwed on the gas cap and hung the pump up, relaxing. And easy.

"What do you want?" Ellie asked over her shoulder, heading for the store.

"Usual," he called back, getting into the car and adjusting the driver's seat. He moved the car away from the pumps and fiddled with the radio while he waited. A bubble of anger rose as he looked at the sleek black and grey plastic dash and the garish logo on the wheel. He missed his baby. Missed the legroom. Missed his tapes. Missed her smell and feel and the way she clung to the road.

"What?"

He glanced around as the passenger door opened and Ellie got in, passing him a cup and a bag.

"Nothin'," he said. "Just – uh – wishing she was here."

Nodding, Ellie sipped at her coffee. "I was thinking about that before we left," she said. "No reason not to bring her home if we find a place to stay for awhile? You could do some work on her, even if you're driving something else?"

He blinked down at the wheel. The rebuild he'd done at Bobby's had been fast and dirty; it'd been years since he'd pulled down the engine and gone right through it. His fingers pulled the paper bag open and he stared down at the slice of pie it contained. Apple. The rich, thick scents of fruit and cinnamon wafted out.

"Uh, yeah," he said, his throat inexplicably tight. "Yeah."

* * *

 _ **An hour later**_

"So, how many lines?" Ellie asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

"Two from any verse, one from a chorus," Dean answered. He was leaning back into the corner of the seat and door.

"Do I have to sing it?"

"Nope, just say the lines."

"Um … yeah, okay," she said, the lyrics of a million songs flashing through her mind. "Okay … _'pleased to meet you, hope you know my name.'_ "

He snorted. "Too easy. Sympathy for the Devil, Stones."

She smiled and gave him a one-shouldered shrug. "Okay."

" _With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear_."

The music filled her ears for a moment, intricate twisting guitar. "Kashmir, Zeppelin."

"Oh, smart-ass, eh?"

"You started this," she said, sliding a quick glance sidelong at him. " _Hit top speed but I'm still movin' much too slow; I feel so good, I'm so alive._ "

"Uh – crap – I know that," he said, shifting in the seat. "Dammit, I know it."

"You should," she agreed.

"Uh, gimme another line."

"Isn't that cheating?"

"No. Judge ruling. One more line," he said. "C'mon."

"Does it have to be the next line?"

"No – uh – yeah," he said.

"Alright. _'I hear my song_ –"

"' _Playin' on the radio – it goes,'_ " Dean finished, his voice deepening as he sang the half-line. "Detroit Rock City, Kiss. Haven't heard that in years. Sam managed to lose the tape."

"No excuses."

"How 'bout … _'Growing darkness taking dawn; I was me but now he's gone'_ " he said, stretching his legs into the well below the dash.

"Metallica," Ellie said, positive of the band, not sure of the song.

"Halfway there."

"Um … Fade to Black?"

"Yeah. This is too easy," he told her. A sideways glance showed Ellie a small, satisfied smile playing on his mouth.

"You and Sam would've been going in hour-long runs?"

"Pretty much," he agreed. "By the time he was fourteen, I never heard of most of the crap he was listening to and he was tuning out the stuff I liked."

"Philistine."

"Right!" he said, giving her a sideways grin. "How'd you get to know the songs so well?"

She shrugged. "My aunt's husband had a record collection, back to the '40's. I went through it probably a hundred times, got a taste for a lot of different music. She pretended to prefer classical, but she'd pick out blues and rock when the mood took her."

"You still got the collection?"

Ellie nodded. "In the house."

It was something she'd have to take care of, sometime, she thought, packing up the tall Victorian in Boston. She'd planned on doing it when she'd bought the witch's place, but too much had gotten in the way.

"Uh … you been thinking at all about names?" he asked a moment later, something in his voice catching her attention.

"Names?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. "Y'know, for – uh – "

Glancing at him, her heart skipped a beat when she realised what he was talking about.

"Oh, you – you're thinking about names?"

"Kid's gotta have a name, right?" he said, and in the corner of her eye, she saw him tuck his chin down to his chest, his gaze fixed somewhere on the floor.

"Right." She hadn't thought about it at all. "Sure. You got something in mind?"

"No," he said. "Uh, well, unless, uh, you like – uh – Bobby, if it's a boy?"

It never failed to astonish her, the way he thought about stuff like this, in the background, showing no signs of it, until he came out with a question or said something about the baby, or the future, revealing just how much he was feeling about it all.

"I do like Bobby, for a boy," she agreed readily, keeping her eyes on the highway.

He leaned back, turning to look out the window. "Uh, good."

"I like John, for a boy, too," she said quietly, not entirely sure it was a good idea to push the conversation right now, but unable to let the opportunity slip by again.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to name our kid after my Dad," he said, folding his arms over his chest as he hunched deeper into the corner.

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

When she'd met him, he'd idolised his father. That feeling had been eroded gradually, by the things John hadn't told him, by the things he had. Time had distorted his memories – and it'd clarified them as well – she thought. Seeing his father as just a man had been as difficult as believing the man he'd worshipped had fallen from the sky-high pedestal he'd placed him on.

"He screwed us over," he said.

"I thought he did a pretty good job, given everything that was going on." Like a red flag to a bull, the comment earned her a glare.

"You weren't there. You don't know." His brows pinched together, his tone a warning against pursuing the subject any further.

"Alright. Tell me what he did, Dean, that was so unforgivable?" She ignored the look and the tone and he scowled at her.

"He raised us to be hunters. He cursed us with that upbringing, so neither of us could have what we wanted."

"Did he? Or was he trying to make sure you survived, you and Sam?" She was careful to keep her voice quiet, her tone reasonable. He responded better to rational discussion, more than likely a habit inculcated by his father. "You weren't always unhappy with the life of a hunter."

"So maybe he didn't have a choice in how he raised us, but he sure as hell had a choice in what he – in how he – in what he told us," he muttered. "Bobby was more of a father to us than Dad ever was."

A minefield she didn't want to tackle right now, she decided.

"Yeah, he wasn't perfect," she said. "Didn't always make the right decisions at the right time. Guess that made him human."

He'd looked away, unwilling to argue that point. "He left us, when we needed him the most."

"He gave up his life so that you could live." She knew how hard that would hit him, but he wasn't listening yet.

"I didn't want that. I didn't ask for that. I was ready to die when he made that choice, without asking me!"

"I know." The argument went round and round in circles for him, she knew. The same way his father had probably struggled with his wife's choices. "Doesn't change anything. He did what he could to save his son."

She wanted to ask him if he thought their present wasn't worth that sacrifice on his father's part. He was able, in some strange way, to remain bitter about his father's actions, without seeing the long term effects of it at all.

Pulling in a breath, she added, "The same way you did what you could to save your brother."

For a long moment, she thought she'd gone too far, the silence between them deafening in the small car's interior. Checking ahead, she risked a quick glance to the right, seeing his profile, hard and stony, his throat working.

"That wasn't fair," he said.

"I know." Her fingers tightened around the wheel. "It wasn't. But it's the truth, Dean."

There was a long, whistling exhale from his side.

"You're right," he said. "I did exactly the same thing."

"And you don't regret it."

It wasn't really a question.

"No," he answered anyway. "No, I don't."

He unwound himself, leaning back into the corner and she felt his gaze on her. "It doesn't change anything, Ellie."

"Doesn't it?"

"He could've - I made too many goddamned mistakes because there was too much on me," he said, his voice dropping. "It was too much for a kid."

There wasn't an argument to that. The load was the load, and he'd carried it, no matter how hard it had been. She thought his father might've known how much he'd laid on Dean, known it and regretted every moment. But only Dean would be able to pick out those regrets from his memories.

"He did the best he could," she said mildly.

He mumbled something against the passenger window glass.

"What?"

"Nothin'," he said, looking back. "You, uh, good for a couple of hours?"

"Sure."

"I'm gonna catch up on the sleep I missed."

The bucket seat dropped back and she watched him try and find a relatively comfortable position, too long for the seat or the well.

He might rethink some things, she thought, turning her attention back to the highway. He'd changed his mind about his father's actions – and those of his mother – so many times in the last year, it was hard to keep track.

She'd the feeling for some time he understood all too well how little wriggle room John Winchester'd really had, trying to find out what'd killed his wife, and threatened his sons, trying to stay alive on jobs that forgave no mistakes or errors, trying to grieve and love his boys and all the while constantly – permanently – harried by fear of what Jim's journal had said he'd learned about the demon with whom Mary had made a deal. Dean had read Jim's journals. He'd lived a life worried about what might coming for the people he cared about. He'd had more than a taste of what his father had gone through.

Rubbing her temple with the inside of her wrist, she thought Bobby'd had it easy. It wasn't a fair comparison, but like Dean's decision to save Sam the same way his father'd saved him, it was the truth. It hadn't been up to Bobby to train them to constant vigilance. Or to instil the self-discipline in them that would save their lives, not just once, but over and over. Bobby'd been their vacation time. Someone to talk to and listen to and relax with. And from what the old hunter had told her, in bits and pieces, about those years, John had envied him the role.

He could talk to Bobby about it, she thought. As soon as they got back. Ask him and really find out what the differences were.

* * *

 _ **7.30 p.m.**_

" _How could you make that deal, Dean?" His brother was staring disbelievingly at him and all the times he'd thought those same words, wanting to scream them at his father, came back with a bang._

 _"'Cause I couldn't live with you dead. Couldn't do it." He shrugged. There were things he could do and things he couldn't. This'd happened to fall into the couldn't basket._

 _"So, what, now I live and you die?"_

 _"That's the general idea, yeah."_

 _"Yeah? Well, you're a hypocrite, Dean," Sam said, his face hardening. "How did you feel when Dad sold his soul for you? 'Cause I was there. I remember. You were twisted, and broken. And now you go and do the same thing. To me."_

" _Sammy's right, Dean."_

 _He turned to see his father standing on the other side of the car, his expression worried._

" _How's that? You did it for me." The last thing he needed was for the two of them to join forces now. Done was done. He didn't regret it._

" _I had to save you, son," John Winchester said. "You were the only one who could stop Sam, if it came to it."_

For a moment, his life flickered and wavered in front of him, dissolving and reforming like a mirage in the desert, events and their consequences flashing by like a high-speed film.

" _I told you, Dean," John continued, seemingly unaware of being wiped out and returned. "You had to save Sam – or kill him. The demon's blood was working on him."_

" _Well, I couldn't," he snapped back. "You wanted him saved, you should'a let me go and done the job yourself."_

" _I couldn't," John said, his face drawn. "Sam didn't – wouldn't – listen to me. Only you. If I'd let you die, Sam would never've come back from the hold the blood had on him."_

" _Well, I failed anyway," he said, waving an arm at his brother. "He let the devil out."_

" _But he didn't lose himself –"_

" _Close enough," Dean retorted. "He chose a demon instead of his family."_

" _You brought him back," John argued. "You – just you – let him take Lucifer back to the pit."_

 _Sam looked from his father to his brother. "What you did was selfish. Both of you."_

 _"Yeah, you're right," Dean said, scowling at the floor. "It was selfish. I couldn't live with his sacrifice and you couldn't live with mine. But I'm okay with that."_

" _I'm not," Sam said, glaring at him._

" _Too bad," he said. "It's too late to worry about this anyway."_

 _He looked at his father. "You got out and I went in. And I broke the first seal and Sam broke the last. Just the way they wanted it. And it's over. So give it a rest, the both of you."_

Dean woke abruptly, the fragments of the disjointed and unsettling dream disappearing as his eyes opened. He swallowed, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth and grimacing at the taste. The lunchtime burrito didn't have nearly the same appeal to his tastebuds six hours later. Squinting against the deep gold sunshine flooding onto his face from the side of the car, he lifted his arm, blocking the setting sun, and glanced at his watch. Half-past seven.

"Where're we?"

"Uh … nearly at Kettleman." Ellie glanced at him. "You were pretty deep."

"Yeah. Not as restful as I'd hoped for," he said, wiping a hand over his face as the last moments of the dream replayed in his head. "You, uh, want me to drive for awhile?"

He wanted to stay mad at her, but he couldn't. She didn't lie to him, and she didn't sugar-coat the truth either. He thought he'd gotten through a lot of the crap he'd been holding onto about his father, the night he'd found out she was pregnant. Had thought he'd understood the way the man'd been driven.

And maybe he had, he considered, as she shook her head, maybe it was just Bobby's death that'd made him start comparing the two men who'd moulded him.

"It's only another twenty to Kettleman. We can get a room; get a good night's sleep. Might be the last chance for a while," Ellie said.

"Yeah." He rubbed his eyes, yawning widely. "Okay."

He glanced at her, wondering vaguely if Sam'd gone through this with Jessica.

 _Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?_

 _No, and she's not ever going to know._

He somehow doubted it. Maybe Sam could've spent his life lying to Jess. He couldn't. He needed someone to know him, all the way through, right down where he lived and breathed. The downside was Ellie wouldn't let him get away with lying to himself.

* * *

 _ **8.30 p.m. Kettleman City, California.**_

Ellie turned into the motel's drive, trying to ignore the way the scent of the pizza was driving her crazy. She parked in front of the office. The sunset was now just a long red line along the horizon.

The room was comfortable, a bit larger than normal. They unloaded the gear and set up the defences, tossed a coin for first shower. She won, grinning at him and disappearing into the bathroom. Stripping off her clothes, she left them in a heap on the floor and turned on the shower.

They hadn't gotten any further with the conversation about John Winchester, but that was okay, she decided. With what they had to do next, it would wait.

She heard the soft rumble of the glass shower door a few minutes later and looked over her shoulder, into a pair of green eyes.

"Thought I'd try and help the planet, save on water," he said, his gaze travelling down her body as she turned to him. "Do my bit, you know?"

Ellie tipped her head back, letting the water run down through her hair, as he stepped into the shower with her, then looked at him from under the spray, not trying to hide the surge of arousal that filled her. All he had to do was look at her in that way and she was ready, her pulse accelerating and her breath catching somewhere between lungs and mouth.

"Sure, saving the planet, that's your thing, right?"

He grinned, stepping toward and taking the soap from her hand. "Let me help you with that."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

 _ **11.45 p.m. August 5, 2012. Evanston, Wyoming**_

Sam groaned under his breath, rolling over again and glaring at the digital clock on the motel's nightstand. A minute had passed since the last time he'd looked.

The drive'd been easy, the small convoy making good time along the interstate until midday, then through the back roads. They'd stopped at Evanston at 7.15 p.m., the motel's owners bending over backward to accommodate them. That'd been a weird thing, getting first-class service. He'd wanted his brother there, just to see Dean's reaction.

The drive'd been a surprise—and a relief—in itself. Trish had been easy to talk to, the miles disappearing under the Jeep's tyres without the usual fatigue settling into his bones at the sight of the unending blacktop.

The conversation, picked up from earlier disclosures at the hospital, had flowed, from one subject to another mostly without pause; the occasional silences restful and without expectation. Remembering it, Sam thought the last time he'd been with someone for that long, just talking about everything and nothing had been the few days he and his brother and Ellie'd spent at Whitefish. There'd been no need to skirt around the details of his life. No need to hide anything, he realised, pushing his hair back off his forehead as he frowned. He had, though. Talked around some things.

Rolling onto his stomach, he grabbed the pillow and tucked it under his chin as he stared at the nondescript bedhead without seeing it.

"I didn't really get to know my mother _," she'd said, and he'd felt the pang of that resonating through him._

"They catch the guy that did it?" _he'd asked._

"Yeah, just a local man," _she'd said._ "Driving drunk every payday of his life, the cops knew about him but they'd given up booking him. The detective said they usually picked him up a block from the bar, but that night there'd been a hold up at the Gas'n'Sip and they forgot."

Fate, he wondered uneasily, or just bad luck? Was there a difference?

"Dad missed her, every day, I thought. He never found anyone else, but I'm not sure he really tried too hard _."_

 _Like his father, he'd thought. It hadn't just been the fear of what was after them that'd kept John Winchester running and hiding and moving constantly. He'd been shocked, hearing the anguish in his father's voice, when Meg'd killed Caleb and John's control had splintered, letting out things he was sure his father hadn't wanted them to hear from him. It hadn't really occurred to him earlier that his father had bottled up everything he'd felt for his wife, the night she'd been killed, and had never had the chance to let it out or let it go. Brief liaisons, John'd had in plenty. It hadn't been until they'd found out about Adam, that he'd considered how lonely his father must've been._

 _They'd been driving through a patch of empty land, dried up and a million shades of brown and yellow, and she'd straightened in her seat._

"Sam, pull over _."_

"What? _" He'd looked around. "_ Why? _"_

"You wanted to see what I can do? _" she said, waving a hand at the scenery. "_ This isn't a bad spot. _"_

 _He'd pulled over, the Jeep leaving a mile high dust cloud as its tyres hit the dirt. "_ Where? _"_

"There. _" She'd pointed to a small copse of trees, a hundred or so yards off the road._

 _Watching her assemble and load the M40, her movements deft and economical, he'd realised he wasn't sure if he wanted to her to prove her skill or not. He'd pulled out his binoculars, scanning the area for a target. The sign, maybe a quarter mile from them, advised trespassers they'd be shot. It was clearly visible through the high-spec glasses._

"You see that sign? _"_

 _She nodded, ducking her head to the scope as she'd stretched out on the dirt. "_ Range, five hundred and twenty yards _," she said. "_ Target? _"_

"Three rounds _," he said, glancing down at her. "_ Into the word 'shot' _."_

 _The gun's crack was diffused by the wide open space, and he stared through the glasses, seeing the bullet hit the 'o' of 'shot'. She cleared the spent round and reloaded and the second bullet went into the 's'._

She hadn't been kidding, he thought, rolling onto his back. The third round had gone into the 't' and he knew he couldn't have done any better.

"I pass? _" she'd asked, grinning up at him when she'd cleared the third casing._

"Guess so _," he'd told her. He wasn't happy about it, exactly. But he wasn't unhappy about it either, he realised. The odds were high enough as it was. They'd be reduced with another good shooter. And he would be able to put her somewhere safe. Safer, he amended with an internal grimace. Out of the range of most things. "_ But you stay with Dwight _."_

 _Disassembling the gun, she'd agreed. He'd taken the rifle and repacked it into the back of the Jeep, watching her brush the pale, fine dust off her clothes from the corner of his eye._

 _Back on the road, he'd swallowed against a rush of feeling, wondering if he was being selfish, if his decisions about the woman sitting next to him were being driven by emotions he hadn't felt—or wanted—for a long time. His track record with romantic attachments wasn't great._

 _Tricia hadn't said much either, her gaze turned to the scenery flying past them. He couldn't blame her; even if they succeeded in Sunrise, the life she'd built for herself would be gone. Not forever, maybe, but for the foreseeable future._

The knock on the door was soft, and for a moment he didn't move, not sure he'd heard it. It came again, more decisively, and he threw the covers back and swung his legs off the bed, hand reaching for the Taurus on the nightstand automatically.

He opened the door. Tricia stood outside, her coat pulled tight around her.

"Uh, hey. What's wrong?" He peered past her.

"Nothing," she said. "I couldn't sleep, and judging by the banging on the walls in here, I thought you might be having the same problem. Can I come in?"

"Uh … yeah. Sure." He turned as she walked past him, closing the door and abruptly aware he was standing there in a threadbare tee shirt and boxers. "Sorry—I –"

"It's okay. It wasn't what you were doing that was keeping me awake." She glanced back at him and drew a bottle of whiskey from under the coat, setting it on the room's small table. "Nightcap?"

His forehead wrinkled up in surprise. "Uh –"

"Glasses? Or do you just want to swig from the bottle?" She unscrewed the cap.

He shook his head. "Uh … yeah, I'll get some … glasses."

Walking to the kitchenette, he ran a hand through his hair. _Get a grip_ , he told himself, grabbing the two water glasses from the tray on the counter. _C'mon, Sammy, you're actin' like some Victorian virgin_ , his brother's voice jeered, somewhere, not too distantly, at the back of his mind.

He put the glasses on the table and hesitated as Tricia shrugged out of the big coat and hung it on the back of a chair. The close-fitting, long-sleeved outfit she was wearing was covered in small butterflies. And made of some sort of soft cotton. And was, he realised belatedly, her pyjamas.

 _Dude! Pyjama party!_

He didn't need Dean's commentary right now. His brow furrowed when Tricia picked up the bottle and poured a couple of inches into each glass.

"You want to get drunk?" He lifted his glass, eyeing the level.

"No." She smiled and clinked her glass gently against his. "I'm aiming to turn off the part of my brain that keeps thinking about half-angels and gateways to Hell and demons going to war."

"Uh huh." He swallowed a mouthful. It wasn't a bad idea. There were a few things he should stop thinking about, he realised. He wasn't sure the whiskey would help with that.

"How did you guys meet Ellie?"

It wasn't, he thought, gulping down another mouthful, a topic that far away from angels and demons.

"We sort of her met her in '95," he said, frowning at the memory. After Spokane, that hunt had come back more clearly. He'd remembered Dean not letting him see what was left of the bodies. "We were hunting the thing that killed her family. An elemental."

"Oh, so, there's a long history?" Tricia looked over the rim of her glass at him.

He shook his head. "No. We never found out what happened to her until we met her again in 2007."

"How was that?"

"Dean went back to the hospital, after we'd killed the witch," he said. His brother'd told him about that—his memories were hazier. Their father'd been injured by the witch and there'd been a few tense weeks waiting for him to heal up. "She had an aunt who took her back East."

"And in 2007?"

"We were looking for demons," he said, staring at his glass. The little town, the bar and grill, the wrongness of the quarry and the way the alley'd looked, when he'd been drawing the trap; the memories came back with a rush, strangely vivid. "Dean ran into them on his own and they—"

— _they used him as bait_ , the thought finished in his head. He couldn't say it out loud. Glancing at her, he recognised his reluctance to say anything about that time, or what'd happened after, Dean's deal or going to Hell or what he'd done while his brother'd been gone.

"Ellie was working the same omens and she helped get him free," he said, with an internal shrug. "After that, we ran her into a few times, and, um, worked with her a few times."

"So, they've been together for—um—five years now?"

The laugh tickled his throat but he didn't let it out. The length of time it'd taken Dean to acknowledge what he felt wasn't that funny. "Uh, no. They've been together a couple of years. It took them a long time before they admitted what was going on."

Tricia's eyes widened at him. "You're kidding?"

"Nope," Sam said. He lifted his glass. "Dean—he's—uh—got some—uh—trust issues."

Which was putting it mildly, and wasn't due to having his heart broken before he'd met Ellie, he thought. He tipped his glass up, wondering what, if anything, the redhead had told Tricia. Didn't women talk about this stuff all the time?

"Well, Ellie has some trust issues as well," Tricia said candidly. "At least, from what I've noticed."

"Have you known her long?"

"A few years," she said. "She and her partner—her first partner—used to hunt a bit with Dad."

"Did you meet him?" Sam asked. The few people he'd known who had met Michael Furente had seemed ambivalent about the man.

"Yeah. A few times." She nodded and sipped her whiskey. "He was one of those unforgettable men, you know?"

He wondered what she meant. "In what way?"

"Well, he was drop-dead gorgeous, for starters," Tricia said, glancing back at him. "Had some gypsy blood, Ellie told me later. Black hair, dark brown eyes—" She smiled as faint colour filled her cheeks. "I had the worst kind of crush on him, for years. But he was a—uh, a serious guy—I mean, really serious—about the life, the job. Ellie was the only one who could get him to smile or joke around."

"I, uh, I heard he was pretty good—?"

"He was," she agreed. "Extremely good. Dad said Michael saved his life, more than once. He had a sixth sense or something. He just knew when something was wrong."

"Did, uh, Ellie tell you much about how he died?"

She shook her head. "She never mentioned that. Dad said it wasn't something that everyone needed to know." She lifted a brow at him. "Do you know?"

He dropped his gaze to his glass. "No, not really. Dean—I think she told Dean but he's never said anything about it."

Something about a demon and a trade, he recalled vaguely. Too close to what his father and brother had both done to be a comfortable topic of conversation.

"Well, I was surprised to hear he'd died on the job," Tricia said. "We stopped seeing Ellie much after that. I thought she might've stopped hunting, but Dad said she was away for a while."

Sam wondered how much Dean knew about the man who'd been Ellie's first partner and mentor.

"Anyway, I just thought she and Dean had been together for a long time. They seem—I don't know—really good together—comfortable, you know?" Trish said, jarring him back to the present.

Sam nodded. "They are good together," he said with a shrug. "Hands down, she's the best thing that ever happened to my brother, and I think—I _know_ —she feels the same way about him, but it—uh—took them a long time to get a sense of how that worked."

"Do you think it works?" Trish asked. "Hunting together?"

"I don't know," Sam said, shaking his head. "It does for them, but I—I don't—I'm not sure it would for me. Or anyone else."

"Ellie said your grandfather and grandmother hunted together?"

For a second, he saw Samuel's face again, saw the older man's dark eyes softening with memory.

" _Dee and me, we hunted for five years before Mary came along,"_ Samuel had told him, his gaze moving around the enclosed compound. _"M'brother, Nate, 'n his family, m'cousins too. You gotta history here, Sam. Nothin' to be ashamed of, either."_

Banishing the moment, he shrugged. "They did. My great-uncle and cousins too."

"So, why the doubts?"

"They died, for one thing," he said, making a face as he looked down at the table. "And some of them—like Christian—their wives weren't hunters—they lived together in this fortified commune –" He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I don't know—it's just not the way I see it."

"But it's not all etched in stone, is it?" Tricia persisted. "There aren't any rules about what you do and how you live?"

"There are dangers," he pointed out. "I was in training from my seventh birthday. My brother started earlier."

She picked up her glass, taking a sip of the contents. Sam wondered—again—what she was thinking.

"Normal isn't a possibility now," he added, not even sure what normality was now. He'd told Dean he'd end up like their father, dragging Lisa and Ben around, keeping them on lockdown. It'd been all he could see for them, soul or no soul.

"Normal is a delusional concept, Sam." Tricia gave him a sardonic grin. "Mass marketing and prime-time tv made it up."

"I'll give you that," he acknowledged. "But you know what I mean."

"Once the curtain's been drawn back, you can never unknow what you know?" she asked, her voice light.

"Yeah," he said, dropping his gaze. "And you can't get free of it."

"Why would you want to?"

Tricia's hand slid across the table, her fingers curling around his. "Pretending things don't exist doesn't make them not exist."

Her touch, even that light, warmed him, in more ways than one. In the hospital, they'd talked, getting-to-know-you conversations, while he'd been working hard to get his muscles doing what he wanted them to again. He'd told her some things. Told her about Jess, and Madison. About his family. Some of that she'd known already, from her father, from other hunters. The relief he'd felt, being able to say it out loud, to someone who'd been listening, and who could understand, had been immense. At the time, he'd fallen over the realisation that while his brother would rather be torn limb from limb than admit to it, it was a part, at least, of what'd made Dean fall in love for the first time. That revelation had been followed closely by another. He needed the same thing.

"Do you want to raise a family in this life?" he asked, trying to simultaneously ignore and mask the faint edge in his tone he was conscious of, an edge that lurked just behind his curiosity. "I mean, worried about monsters and being hunted, instead of just worrying about bills and the mortgage and school fees?"

She gave the question the thought it deserved, he noticed, her gaze cutting away.

"I don't think there's that much difference, between the dangers of ordinary life and the dangers for a hunter's family," she said, a moment later, her eyes lifting to meet his. "Dad hunted, but he was at home more than he was away. He did most of his research at home. I didn't even realise we were different from other families until I was halfway through grade school."

She had a point, Sam thought. The only reason he and Dean been dragged all over the country was the fear driving their father for answers, for a way to stop what Azazel had planned, a way to protect his sons.

Without warning, in his mind's eye, the big living area of the main house in his grandfather's compound appeared, the detail sharp and clear. Every evening, after dinner, they'd gathered there, to kick back and relax, talk about the next day's job, shoot some pool or play darts, get onto the networked computers and or look through the printer bins of the possible cases the bots had found, or read from the extensive library of lore his grandfather had meticulously collected and stored. His cousins, so many times removed he'd lost track of exactly how they were related, all comfortable with each other—Christian and his wife, Jeanie; Mark; Gwen; Nathan Junior and his wife, Aurora, and more often than not, their two young sons, Jessie and Cord—and his grandfather, almost always with a book in one huge hand, talking, watching, reading. Then and now, he wondered how Samuel had handled the first few years of being a family, with a wife and baby to protect as well as hunting. He wished he'd thought to ask the man, when he'd had the chance.

Another memory, holding that same preternatural clarity, the unwanted legacy of being soulless and as emotionless as a machine, came back.

" _You could do worse than Katie, Sam,"_ Mark'd commented, both of them watching the slender blonde woman on the other side of the room. In her mid-twenties, graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science, and a determination to help her family do what they did however she could. She'd been teaching a reluctant Samuel how to get the internet to work for them, he remembered.

At the time, he couldn't've been less interested. Katie was attractive and intelligent, had a good sense of humour but none of those things had mattered to him. Only the hunt. Only doing what he thought he did best.

"Penny for 'em," Tricia said, pulling him back.

"Not worth a penny," he replied, more or less automatically as he lifted his glass and swallowed a burning mouthful. He wished those too-sharp memories would fade with time, but they didn't.

Setting his glass down, he drew in a breath and said, "My brother isn't finding it easy, right now. He wants to protect the people he loves, keep them safe, and that doesn't always work out."

"Ellie said she'd be doing research for a while," Tricia said. "Something about a database for hunters?"

Nodding, Sam said, "Um, yeah, we think that'll help."

"I think things can work out if both people are really honest about what they want."

His gaze sharpened involuntarily on her. "It should," he agreed warily.

"What do you want, Sam?"

His mouth dried out, his pulse thundering in his ears suddenly. He didn't know. It'd been a long, long time since he'd thought about what he wanted. The last thing he'd truly wanted had been to find a way to stop his brother from going to Hell. After, he'd told himself he wanted to kill Lilith, avenge Dean's death, but that'd been mixed up with the insane flushes of power that Ruby's blood had sent sizzling through him. He'd wanted to put the devil back in his Cage, but even that hadn't been that clear, all tangled with guilt for letting demonkind manipulate him into letting the devil out. He'd wanted peace, when all he could see was Lucifer and the flames flickering against the ice.

"I don't know," he said, the words coming out almost by themselves. "I haven't thought about that—for a while."

She lifted a brow at him, topping up his glass from the bottle. "Do you want to step off the carousel and see what else is out there?"

Pulling in a deep breath, Sam ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think that's possible."

"Anything's possible, if you're willing to sacrifice everything for it."

"That sounds like a quote," he prevaricated, shooting a sideways glance at her.

Smiling, she nodded. "J. M. Barrie."

His brow wrinkled up.

"He wrote Peter Pan," Tricia clarified.

 _Sacrifice everything_ , Sam thought. Giving up now, walking away, that would be sacrificing more than his family.

"I can't do that," he said. "Not walk away and let everyone go."

She nodded. "I can't either."

Ducking his head, he realised how neatly she'd set that trap. "Fair enough."

"But I'd like to get you know you, Sam," she said, tipping a little more whiskey into her glass and lifting it. "And while I wouldn't want to hunt like Ellie does, I wouldn't be averse to putting what I can do to work."

"What d'you mean?" he asked, his gaze rising to meet hers. "Stick around, maybe permanently?"

"I've been thinking about it." She tilted her head to the side, seeming to study the colours of the liquid in the glass she held. "A lot depends on you."

Sam's breath caught in his throat as a flood of images, bright and fast and unexpected, filled his mind.

"Me?" His voice rose to a squeak and he coughed self-consciously behind a hand, lifting his glass and tipping the contents into his mouth.

"I'm not really that attracted to Garth."

The few remaining drops of the whiskey followed a whistling gulp of air into his lungs, burning furiously, and Sam leaned forward, glass clunking to the table top as he wheezed and coughed to get it back out.

When his eyes stopped watering, he looked across at her, wiping his cheeks and running his hand over his brow and through his hair.

Tricia was smiling at him. "Sorry."

"You don't look that sorry," he said, shaking his head.

"You turned a beautiful shade of puce," she acknowledged. "Thought I was going to have to give you mouth-to-mouth."

Heat flushed up his neck and he glanced away. "Uh …"

"Sam?" Tricia asked, leaning forward. "Are you a romantic?"

He didn't know how to answer that. The whole conversation had careened out of control and the whiskey in his stomach and airways was making him too hot to be able to think clearly.

A hand curled around his, and his gaze snapped back to her involuntarily.

"I don't want to spend tonight alone."

 _Say something_ , a voice yammered at the back of his mind. He had memories, a lot of them, of flirting and seducing effortlessly, of getting what he'd needed really smoothly, back when he'd been flying soulless and hadn't really given a damn. His mouth wouldn't work. His tongue was thick and dry and he swallowed, trying to work up some saliva.

"Last night on earth?" he croaked, his brother's line coming to the rescue.

Tricia shook her head. "No. Not really."

Her eyes met his, and he realised they were really several shades of blue, a mosaic of blues.

"A promise of tomorrows," she said, one fine, dark brow lifting.

He nodded and got to his feet. That was better. He didn't think he could do melancholy right now.

* * *

 _ **August 6, 2012. Kettleman City, California**_

Ellie stretched out and opened her eyes. The room was still dim. She turned her head, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. Six a.m.

She was very aware of her skin. The silky touch of warm fabric under her, the cooler air on her shoulders, the heat and textures of the man lying beside her, all of it reported in great detail along every inch of her body.

Turning over, she propped herself on one elbow and studied the smooth expanse of Dean's back. There was a short, red line where she'd cut out the stitches a week ago, nothing else to show where the glass had gone in. Lifting her hand, she ran her fingertip along it lightly.

Despite being healed twice by the angel, he still had a lot of scars, she thought, her fingertip finding a rough patch of skin lower, over his ribs. Not as many as she had, but more than a few. The worst ones were on the inside, where they couldn't be readily seen. They showed up, every now and again in his eyes, in the way he reacted to some things, didn't react at all to others.

She let her fingers trail down the indentation of his spine, firmly enough not to tickle. He rolled back, his arm dropping heavily against her. Her fingers slid softly over the big muscles of his shoulder, slowing as they reached the puckered and twisting scar that ran over his chest. A close encounter with a lamia, he'd said. Not that one should've even been in this country.

Her pulse accelerated as she looked at him. The crawling flux of heat made her smile, a little derisively, at herself. Too many things about him could cause that response; touch, taste, smell, sight, the sound of his voice in the darkness, raw with need.

Dean rolled onto his back, and she looked over the scars on his chest, his stomach, her hand following her gaze absently. He huffed a slow exhale, eyelids lifting slightly. Did she want to wake him?

 _Yes_. She definitely did.

* * *

He came to awareness on the tail end of a long, soft moan, still resonating in his throat, as another wave of pleasure rolled over and through him. His hips lifted as the muscles of his back and legs contracted, and he could feel the silken curtain of her hair spread over his stomach, the strands sliding over his skin, adding to and inflaming the cacophony of sensation.

It was the sight of her that tipped him over, as much as the feelings that were building, a dam filled and overflowing. The sight of her mouth on him, and the flick of her tongue, and that was it—he was gone.

His heart was slowing down when he realised she hadn't moved, wasn't stopping.

"Whoa. Hey." He shifted up onto his elbows.

She lifted her head, smiling. "You're young."

"Not that young. I'm in, but it's gonna take me some time." He leaned forward, kissing her. "Uh, what's going on?"

She made a face. "Hormones, blood flow, increased sensitivity."

The smile that spread slowly over his face was partly astonishment, partly satisfaction. "You want me."

"Yes." She laughed, her expression wry. "All the time."

"All you had to do was say."

He pushed her down and covered her mouth with his, his hand caressing her neck, slipping lower to brush over her breast, thumb rubbing over her nipple as she pushed against him, the sharp inhale of her breath sending a shiver through him.

Breaking the kiss, he sucked in a deep breath at the sight of her face; her expression, almost stormy with desire, lit him up instantly. He'd never quite figured out why her arousal had that effect on him, and he'd stopped questioning it a long time ago. It just was, like the double-beat his heart gave when he saw her smile. And the flood of tenderness that filled him when he watched her sleep. He slid his hand down her body, over the bump and between her legs, his body throbbing as he watched her face, his fingers slipping through moist, silky folds, dipping into her. She arched up, driving her hips against him and her moan vibrated through him.

"Ellie," he breathed, his heart accelerating again.

She opened her eyes and looked into his, shaking her head slightly. "Not slow, not tender, Dean. Hard and fast and deep."

That had to be the quickest comeback ever, he thought incoherently as he rolled over her, her legs wrapping around him, and he pushed into her hot, welcoming wetness … hard and fast and deep.

* * *

He lay on his back, warm, every muscle heavy and loose, his arms wrapped around her. Her cheek was in the hollow of his shoulder, her hair spilling over his shoulder and chest. There probably were things that felt better, somewhere in the world, he thought. He couldn't imagine any of them.

It was hard to remember that in a few hours they'd be going through a gate into Hell. The whole idea seemed ridiculous, here and now. They were together. They were going to have a family. They should've been looking for a home, Ellie picking out a dress, or whatever it was women did when they were planning a wedding.

He frowned as he realised neither of them had even mentioned the subject again. The frown deepened as he thought on that a bit longer. She hadn't really talked about what would happen later at all.

"Ellie?"

"Mmm?"

"I—uh—never really asked you about this," he said, his hand moving from her hip, fingers spreading out to cup the shallow curve of her stomach. "If you, uh, you know, wanted it."

He felt her cheek lift as she smiled. "It's a bit late to worry about that, isn't it?"

"Yeah." It was, but he still needed to know. "Are you—okay with it? I mean … are you happy?"

She rolled to the side, shifting onto her elbow and lifting her head to look at him. "What do you think?"

"Nuh-uh. Tell me," he said, face screwing up at the tactic. "The truth. How you feel about it."

"The truth is … I'm very happy, Dean."

In the grey light creeping around the edge of the curtains, he could see her face, her eyes looking into his. Her gaze dropped for a moment, a small crease appearing between her brows. When she looked back at him it'd gone and a slight smile lifted the corner of her mouth.

"Lucifer is in the power of the arch-demons, and they're probably working out how to take the planet by force before Heaven can respond," she said, the tone of her voice completely pragmatic. "The Others are already in the country, and our friends have gone to fight them; we have to raise the most powerful archangel from the ninth level of Hell …"

Moving her hand up to his chest, she leaned closer. "But, you know, every morning I wake up next to you, and every night, your arms are around me when I go to sleep, and —"

She hesitated, glancing away and back to him, the one-sided smile deepening the dimple beside her cheek. "—inside of me, our child is growing, yours and mine."

"It sounds sappy, and maybe that's the hormones," she added with a shrug. "But I don't honestly think I've ever been this happy."

The words reverberated through him, trapping his breath in his throat and drying out his mouth. It _was_ sappy, he thought, but it wasn't the hormones.

"Okay, your turn," Ellie said, inching closer to him. "In full detail."

He let his breath out in a long exhale, shaking his head. "Hey, c'mon, what the hell can I _ever_ say now that's going to top that?"

A breathy laugh tickled his shoulder. "Guess you'll have to show me, then?"

"That—" He sucked in a deep breath, rolling onto his side. "—that I can do."

* * *

 _ **I-80 E, Wyoming**_

Sam adjusted the visor, cutting the harsh glare from the unending concrete ribbon of the interstate, and glanced across at Tricia. She was sleeping against the passenger door, her long legs crossed in the well. They hadn't gotten much sleep last night. He was still a little surprised at what'd happened. Surprised at himself. He'd gotten by on so little for so long now it felt as if he'd forgotten what it could be like.

 _Yeah well, put it away until this part's over_ , he reminded himself firmly. _Don't need distractions right now_.

Far ahead on the road, he could see Twist's truck, steady in the same lane. Behind him, Garth was driving Marcus' four wheel drive, with the Watcher riding shotgun. A fun ride, he thought, recalling Penemue's cool and ancient regard with a smile. The fallen angel had grilled him pretty thoroughly on the plan, on the possibilities, probabilities and likely outcomes, not missing a single thing. It was fair enough, he'd thought at the time. Penemue was risking his life—a mortal life—and those of his brothers and their children, relying on his judgement. The least he could do was show he was well prepared. When they'd hit Nevada, the angel, Danyael, had left to find the Others, to offer the hook, Penemue'd remarked. It was hard to tell if the Watcher thought it was going to work or not.

Eyes on the road and body engaged in driving, his mind was free to consider the powers of these fallen angels and their children.

In Oregon, he'd read what little was around on them, both the biblical references and the unsanctioned ancient texts, pulled from Ellie's library, from Bobby's and what little remained of Bill's, and from the online archives of a dozen theological universities around the world. The _irin we-qadishin_ , they'd been called, the Aramaic words referring to both watchers and holy ones together. Fallen deliberately, they didn't have the power of Heaven behind them, but that didn't mean they weren't more powerful than an ordinary man, although he wasn't sure of how exactly.

Lucifer had fallen when Michael had defeated him and his army; the eldest archangel had been judge, jury and executioner when he'd thrown his younger brother into the Cage. Anna had fallen, had torn out her Grace and found a human woman to be reborn in. The Watcher had listened to that story, brows rising. Apparently it was a big deal to be able to invade the biological process at precisely the right moment, infusing the cells with a celestial frequency. Angels didn't have souls, the Watcher'd said. They were energy, like souls, but they lacked the Divine Spark of human souls.

Further discussions with the Watcher had made it clear that what Anna had done wasn't the way it'd worked with the Others, or with the Watchers. Baraquiel had said they'd fallen with God's blessing, their Grace intact, and had been charged with guiding humanity to maturity. The fallen angel had tried to explain how they'd formed their bodies. That'd gotten mixed up with a lot of the more confusing references in the texts about cutting off wings. He wasn't sure of that either, popular fiction had made a lot of that in the last few years.

Penemue had told him that they could hear Heaven. Could hear the angels talking, could sometimes see what they saw. He wondered if Cas was keeping good security up there, making sure that he used a cone-of-silence or something angelic along those lines. If he wasn't, the Others would know what was coming for them.

His thoughts veered to his brother, and what Dean and Ellie were attempting to do. He wondered if he should start mourning now. It seemed an impossible task. His memories of the Pit were violent and fragmented; he couldn't remember the details of what it had looked like, only how it had felt. And those he kept locked down as much as he could. He had one clear memory of his half-brother in there. Michael had withdrawn for a moment and he remembered Adam's face, the expression in his eyes as he'd looked around, face slack with shock. That was it. He didn't think that Adam would be sane if they got him out.

Tricia stirred and opened her eyes. She looked around as she straightened up, then back to Sam.

"Sorry about that." She yawned. "Where are we?"

"About eighty miles from Sunrise. We should have enough time to get set up before dark." An unexpected and unwarranted feeling of doubt kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road.

"Will Danyael be able to let us know when they're coming?"

"Penemue said he would." Sam glanced in the rearview mirror, watching the road behind them. "We'll have to trust him on that."

She slid across the seat, and laid a hand on his thigh. He jumped a little, glancing at her.

"Don't take it so seriously, Sam. It was just sex, not like we're engaged or anything." She grinned at him and shifted back.

"Yeah, uh, of course."

* * *

 _ **I-5 California**_

Los Angeles, Dean thought, his gaze flicking sourly at the traffic crawling to either side of them.

"Take Ventura Freeway." Ellie craned her neck to peer ahead. "Should be coming up soon."

He nodded and changed lanes, slowing a little to accommodate the speed around him. He saw the curving turn and took it. "How far are we?"

"Not far, a few miles. We take the Foothill Freeway in a few minutes, heading north."

"How many people live here?"

"Greater metro region? Or just Pasadena?" she asked.

"All of it," he said, waving a hand around.

"About seventeen million, give or take," she told him. "Maybe a hundred and forty thousand here, I think."

"Rats in a sewer," he muttered, a scowl drawing his brows together as another of the ubiquitous four-wheel-drive wagons cut in ahead of him. He hadn't seen one that looked like it'd ever been off-road, not so much as a gravel chip in the immaculate, mirror-smooth paint finishes.

Ellie smiled, looking around at the tract housing and the concrete, the patches of green amidst the buildings. "I thought you were quite fond of suburbia?"

He curled his lip. "Not like this."

They took the Foothill north, getting off before the wash and turning left onto Oak Drive. The gravelled access road was only a hundred yards further on. They'd left most of their gear back in Oregon, bringing only what they could carry. If all went according to plan, their exit would be a long way from here and they wouldn't be coming back for the truck.

The wide scrubby wash was deserted in the late afternoon sunshine. The concrete and gravel storm drain held an odd, hollow silence, as if even the birds didn't come here. Not at all creepy, Dean thought, making a face as he pulled off the road, cut the engine and looked around.

Opening the passenger door, Ellie slid out, and turned back to grab her pack, one hand diving in to rummage around for the EMF. Dean left the keys in the ignition and pushed his door open, going to the rear to grab the canvas gear bag.

He followed Ellie as she crossed the stream and began to walk along the sandy bank. Her head was bowed over the EMF in her hand, and he shifted his gaze to scan along the buildings and houses that were perched high above the arroyo. His father had walked here, with Bill Harvelle, he thought suddenly. Along this bank, to a Gate that couldn't be closed, but didn't stand open all the time.

Ahead, Ellie had stopped, the EMF's volume turned down to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Over her shoulder, he could see the needle in the gauge flattened and unmoving against the red line.

"What?" he asked, watching her turn her head from side to side, the small crease marring her forehead.

"Can you feel it?" she asked him, her voice low.

A shiver ran down his spine. He could feel it; a sense of wrongness here, close by. It was hotter here than it had been a few feet away, and still, as if the air movement had been blocked by something.

Turning his head to look back at her, he caught the movement in the corner of his eye; a flicker of light, like a sheer curtain caught by a draught. He snapped his gaze back to where he thought he'd seen the movement, but there was nothing there. Just the faint shimmer of heat rising from the pale sand and gravel.

"It's here." Ellie looked down at the EMF. "Not quite open."

They felt a warm wind on their faces at the same time, carrying the smell of brimstone on it, faint cries barely discernible against the noise of the traffic on the freeway.

Ellie grabbed Dean's hand, accelerating abruptly and dragging him behind her. His eyes widened when she seemed to vanish in front of him, her hand still tightly gripped around his, then he was through and falling, Ellie disappearing under him, and the smell of sulphur was much stronger, the heat drying his skin and eyes and lungs, and the light a deep, flickering carnelian, pulsing slowly.

* * *

 _ **Sunrise, Wyoming**_

Sam turned onto the dirt road and slowed the car right down. Ahead he could see the dust raised by Twist's truck, and he hung back, not sure the suspension would cope with the corrugations and holes if he went through them too fast.

They bounced over the railway tracks, and turned right, following the cloud of dust deeper into Colt's pentagram. The church was on the north-west point, the rails enclosing it laid along the flattish ground just at the foot of the rising slopes. He glanced into the mirror, seeing a cloud of dust rising behind him. Beyond that, as the road twisted and turned, he could see another one further back. Everyone present and accounted for, he thought.

The Colt was locked in the trunk. Bobby had shown him how to make more bullets for it, as Ruby had taught Bobby. He was still a little nervous about the damned thing here, so close to the Gate it opened, but they could use it, and Dean and Ellie wouldn't be able to, not and keep their presence in Hell a secret.

He followed Twist around a wide patch of mesquite, and down the mouth of the canyon. He could see the church roof now, the dull gleam of the sunlight on the tin and lead flashing. Relayed via Frank, Penemue had told them that Danyel's hook had been taken.

The Others were on their way.

* * *

 _ **Fourth level of Hell.**_

Dean heard Ellie's grunt the second before he hit the ground and the same noise exploded involuntarily from him. He rolled over onto his knees and saw her, getting to her feet, rubbing her arm.

"Quite a long drop." She winced as she twisted her arm to look at the elbow. It was missing a couple of layers of skin and oozing blood, but the joint was working properly. She picked up her bag and pulled it over her shoulder, looking around.

"You alright?" He looked at her arm. She nodded and turned, looking down the rocky path that led between the high walls of volcanic rock, laughing softly.

"It was worth it."

"You know where we are?" He raised a sceptical brow as he took in the reddish-tinged rock tunnel.

"Not more than a couple of hundred yards from the abyss."

Abruptly, he remembered the staircase he and Sam had come down, the spread of darkness when they stepped into a cavern. Or what they'd thought might've been a cavern. It'd been too big and too dark to see anything. He remembered the silence of it. Not a silence devoid of life but a waiting silence, like something was hiding there, in the blackness.

Shouldering his duffel, he followed her as she walked confidently down the tunnel. There was a faint movement of air, carrying the smells of brimstone and scorched metal. Their boots clocked softly against the rock and Ellie turned at the end of the tunnel, ducking her head to enter a low doorway.

Dean bent double to get under the lintel of rock, his gaze flicking around. They were in an enclosed stair of stone; twisting, unevenly spaced steps gouged from the rock leading upward to his right, and downward to his left.

Same stairs, he thought, straightening in the higher tunnel. The stench was stronger here, funnelled up on the heat rising from the chasm that lay somewhere lower.

 _Adoian Baltim_.

The Enochian name for the split between the upper and lower levels of Hell. As he followed Ellie down the stairs, watching his footing and grinding his teeth against the abrupt changes in height, the dry text of a book Katherine had given him a long time ago filled his mind.

 _A chasm between the planes. The split is replicated, as far as studies can show, across all three of the dimensions. At the base, miles into the planet's crust_ —metaphysical or physical was a hotly contested academic question by the religious scholars who'd written the book— _a river of molten stone and metal, into which those who'd betrayed their oaths were thrown into, day after day_ —or what counted for days, in Hell's screwed-up time, he thought absently— _their agony eternal_. The Styx and the Acheron had been born during the same fiery eruptions that'd seen the end of most of the dinosaurs, the argument ran, and had remained as life had evolved, been the first hell into which the earliest sinners had be sentenced as punishment for their crimes. Back then, though, sin had been simple and without religious dogma attached.

And it was guarded by the daeva; demons so ancient only their essences existed, clothed in constructs created by the terror in the minds of the souls they tortured.

 _She'd been down here, alone_. The thought, like an infected barb in his flesh, set off a shiver. Alone in this place, looking for him. Looking for a way to get him out.

He couldn't let go of it, didn't matter how much he tried. Too many questions and a nagging sense that he was still missing something, something important. It wouldn't, he thought, make a difference to how he felt or what was between them, but it still felt like there was something he needed to know.

"What made you think you could get me back, when I was here?" he asked, his voice low as they rounded another curving bend in the descending tunnel.

Ellie slowed on the steps below and glanced back over her shoulder. "There were references to souls being pulled out of Hell, returned to their lives."

 _By angels_ , he thought, remembering Bobby's books. The old hunter hadn't found anything about people doing the same thing. She'd told him about travelling, looking for the answers in old libraries, monasteries—hell, he thought derisively, he'd seen her collection, some of it anyway.

"At the time," she continued, "I was more worried about how to find you here. I didn't have the right information to pull you back."

She wouldn't've been able to see him, a soul torturing others. He wouldn't've been able to see her either, he realised, pausing mid-stride.

"How were you gonna find me?"

"Yure gave me a spell," she said, her voice muffled as she kept moving. "Most souls hang onto what they looked like in life. I thought it'd work."

Some reservation in her voice sharpened his attention. "It didn't?"

"I think it did," she said, slowing again. "But I couldn't find you in these levels, and I needed more information on the abyss. That, among other things, was what I went looking for at St Catherine's."

The monastery in Egypt, he recalled. Where she'd met the Watcher.

"How long did it take you to get through here?" Months, he wondered? Even in Hell's time, it couldn't've been quick.

"A while."

"How'd you even find your way around?" The second level was a maze; he remembered reading a little about it in one of Katherine's books. A rat's maze of dead ends and doubled-back tunnels.

"One of my contacts, on the West Coast. John. He's a—an exorcist, kind of—and he told me about the upper levels."

"Just gave you the lowdown on how to get around Hell?"

He caught the brief flash of her grin below. "Well, he's got his contacts too."

She turned left, abandoning the downward path for a level tunnel. He stopped at the junction and looked down. He would have kept going down, he knew. Obviously, that wasn't the right way. He sighed and turned left, extending his stride a little to catch up with her.

The tunnel was getting narrower and darker, and was no longer straight, twisting and turning, limiting their line of vision to a few yards. Dean swore under his breath as he ran into an outcropping, unable to see it in the deepening gloom.

"You okay?" Her voice was low, and he peered ahead, barely able to make her out.

"Gettin' dark in here."

He heard her exhale, the soft scuffle of her feet on the rock.

"Gonna get worse. You got your lighter?"

"Gotta flashlight?"

"No," she said, her face a pale blur as he got closer and she looked up at him. "It's too alien here. It'll draw attention."

She dropped to her knees in front of him, rummaging through her pack. A moment later, she pulled something out of it, holding her hand up for the lighter.

The small flame brightened the space immediately around her, making him blink. She dipped the lighter's flame to something on the ground, and it caught. He recognised the small oil lamp, with its wick of cotton.

Handing him back the lighter, she got to her feet, swinging the bag back over her shoulder and holding the lamp out. Didn't do much for them, Dean thought, glancing around. The light reached a few feet, enough to see the pitted rock under their feet, and the walls around them but not much else.

Dean looked at her profile, outlined in the faint yellow glow. In his mind's eye, he saw her face again, lit up by the light behind him, in the boy's apartment. The look in her eyes, an expression he hadn't been able to decipher then, but that he knew now.

The implications of that memory, things he'd never considered, never even thought about, sent a shockwave through him. In the soft glow of the lamplight, he could see the tiny lines of tension around her mouth, the small crease between her brows as she walked cautiously forward into the darkness. As much as he wanted to ask her now, to confirm what he knew, he couldn't. It was the wrong time and definitely the wrong place to have this discussion. He filed it away unwillingly, and followed her through the tunnel in silence.

* * *

 _ **Sunrise, Wyoming**_

Garth sat on the boulder, the binoculars held to his eyes, and watched the road. When the first puff of dust appeared, he felt his heart thump hard against his ribs. He waited for the second and was rewarded with the sight of it a few minutes later. Putting the binoculars back in their case, he slid off the rock, half-falling, half-scrambling down the hillside and walking fast toward the church.

"They're here."

Sam turned to look at him, nodding. "Let's do it."

Tricia and Dwight climbed to the high windows at the front of the church, both carrying heavy-calibre, long-range rifles. The range was around two hundred yards, they were responsible for taking out the vehicles and picking off whoever they could. Trent and Twist picked up the remaining long-range sniper rifles and headed to opposite sides of the canyon, climbing up through the rocks to get settled in among the Watchers and nephilim, waiting hidden in the scrub and brush.

The cross-fire would take out a few more, even the odds, Sam thought as he watched them climbing. He had the Colt and an M-40; he'd start spraying once the vehicles were down, and hopefully keep enough of them on the ground that the Watchers could do their butcher's work.

Sam slid the Colt's long barrel through his belt, where it was clearly obvious. The machine gun he slung over his shoulder, the gun lying flat against his shoulder blade and flank. He took a deep breath as the clouds of dust drew nearer, able to see the vehicles now, several cars and pickups, followed by a half dozen larger trucks. He had a feeling the Others would be armed as heavily as they were, and he tapped the Kevlar vest that lay under his shirt for reassurance. Frank had acquired several of them from an old friend in law enforcement. Penemue hadn't been able to give him much information on how much experience the Others were likely to have with modern field weapons; he hoped they'd go for the body shots.

The leading cars slowed as they took in the closed nature of the canyon, noses dipping with the hard application of brakes.

Watching from the church doorway, Sam could feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. _Come on in, no one here but us hunters_ , he thought uneasily. _Don't get cold feet now_.

For a long moment, the cars idled forward, but someone must have felt confident enough that the natural formation wasn't a trap. He released his held breath as the vehicles increased their speed, moving deeper into the throat of the canyon.

The leading SUV pulled over behind Twist's truck, the driver turning off the engine and waiting for the dust to settle before getting out.

Definitely Fallen, Sam thought, watching him approach. He was tall; taller by several inches, he estimated. Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist and long legs, dust-covered mottled fatigues not hiding the almost feline fluidity of his gait as he walked toward the church doors.

Sam straightened unconsciously when the fallen angel stopped in front of him. The golden-grey eyes narrowed against the glare of the light on the church's bleached exterior boards as they met his. Pale skin, unmarked by either the years of time or any scar or blemish, and a perfectly symmetrical face of unearthly beauty, was framed by long, auburn hair, lit to a fiery red by the bright morning sunshine.

"You have a key, I believe." The voice was smooth and deep, a cultured baritone.

Sam nodded, his gaze lifting over the man's head to watch as the rest of the vehicles crawled into the area in front of the church and came to a stop, the dust they'd raised swirling above the ground and blowing away.

"I do." Sam met the fallen's eyes again. "And a long list of the things we want for it."

"I am Gadriel," the once-angel said. "Where is the Gate that this key opens?"

Sam gestured toward the south east. "You drove past it. It's at the centre of the railways. That's why we're meeting here."

Gadriel's gaze dipped to the gun pushed through Sam's belt. "You know, you have no need for weapons with us. We are not here to fight."

Sam smiled, looking down at the Colt and drawing it from his belt slowly. "This isn't a weapon, Gadriel. It's the key."

The angel looked up at him, surprise animating his features. "Then let us complete the transaction." He took a step forward.

Sam looked at him, seeing something other than friendliness glinting at the back of the vivid eyes. "Yeah. Let's."

He raised his hand, running it through his hair.

The resulting volley of gunshots was shocking in the quiet valley, but was quickly drowned out by the first explosion, one of the big trucks taking a hit to the fuel tank and igniting. The rear end lifted high into the air with the force and flames spread over the timber and canvas frame, immolating its passengers.

Gadriel spun around, falling to the ground and pulling an automatic from beneath his coat as the gunfire began. He looked up at Sam, the 9mm barrel swinging around. His eyes widened as Sam cocked the Colt, centring the barrel's notched sight over the angel's heart.

"Sorry, it's also a weapon," he said, pulling the trigger.

The bullet hit Gadriel in the heart and lightning discharged deep with the body, crackling and spreading through the torso and limbs, filling the unseeing eyes with iridescent blue fire.

In the open ground between the ridges, bullets flew; a deadly crossfire between Trent and Twist, keeping the Others pinned tightly to their vehicles. One by one, Tricia or Dwight's aim found their targets; the engines and gas tanks, immobilising or igniting the trucks and cars and pickups, sending billowing clouds of black smoke into the still air.

* * *

 _ **Fourth Level of Hell**_

The tunnel narrowed, the rough-cut steps winding and steep. Phosphorescent creatures clung to the damp walls, invertebrates and funghi, mostly, flinching away from the gentle light of the lamp. Here and there, Dean thought he caught sight of larger creatures, or the movement of larger creatures, but he couldn't get a good look at them, glimpsing only a leg or a tail as they scurried away from their footsteps. None of them looked normal, but then he was in Hell and what was normal down here anyway?

The passage opened, the walls drawing back. Ahead of him, Ellie stopped, the small flame of the oil lamp flickering wildly as draughts of warm wind rose and swirled around them. The light enclosed them, its strength dwarfed by the vast space Dean could sense but not see surrounding them. The moving air, thick with the reek of brimstone and carrying the taste of burned metal, cooled the sweat on his body. He looked around, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

"This it?" he whispered to the woman beside him.

"Yeah." Ellie's answer was equally low.

Very distantly, he could hear things in the dark.

* * *

 _ **Sunrise, Wyoming.**_

The area in front of the church was a wasteland, burned out vehicles and still burning ones spread across it, bodies littering the ground. Garth and Twist had ceased fire at Sam's signal and the Watchers came down the hillside, their blades winking and flashing in the dying sunlight, to finish the job.

It was one thing to have someone tell you that an angel or their offspring could not be killed until the heart was taken, Garth realised, his nose wrinkling up in distaste. It was another to realise the truth of it for yourself, as the bodies that were perforated with bullets began to move, rising from the ground, burned or shot or crushed, and looking around for their enemies. He leapt back as a man he'd been about to step over reached for him, the skin of his body crackling and black, his eyes vivid in the burned face.

"Break right, Garth."

He dove to the side at Sam's command. The Colt fired once, into the heart, and the man fell again.

"Take out the hearts before you step over them," Sam suggested.

"Yeah."

Garth pulled the machete from his belt and moved a lot more cautiously as he continued his reconnaissance of the area.

* * *

Scanning the area, Sam thought that perhaps half of the Others had been killed outright in the attack; chests burned out completely or pulverised in the hail of bullets. That cut the odds against them, but still left a big number for them to deal with.

He slid the Colt back through his belt and hefted the machete, walking toward the nearest and pushing his sensibilities and doubts aside as he swung the blade down and cut through the ribcage, plunging his hand into the hole to rip the heart free of the chest. The body arched up as he removed the heart, the eyes flying open, staring into his, then the light died out of them and the flesh was still. Sam dropped the heart onto the ground and threw up convulsively. He stood for a moment, spitting and wiping his mouth then his jaw tightened as he moved onto the next one.

Trent and Twist came down the hillside, their long hunting knives in their hands. Trent didn't see the angel who rose up behind him, its arm snaking around his neck, inexorable pressure against the spine. Tricia's rifle cracked from the church window and the angel released its hold, falling to the ground with half the skull missing where the big calibre bullet had exited. Sam nodded at the church and turned away as Trent dropped to his knees and stabbed through the ribs, cutting out the heart and tossing it aside.

In his peripheral vision, he caught movement. More and more of the remaining angels and nephilim were rising. The hunt became an eerily silent game of cat and mouse as the Watchers and hunters moved through the wreckage, and the angels fought back.

Sam ducked under the wild swing of one, his machete slicing upwards as he stepped close. The point hit bone and flexed sickening in his hand, twisting off the ribs. He was too close, and the angel gripped his arm, the fingers disappearing into the flesh and breaking the bone. The scream that tore out of Sam's throat echoed around the hills, and the angel didn't hear the footsteps behind him, as a long black blade plunged through its back, and a darkly tanned hand followed, tearing the heart from its chest.

Penemue threw the heart aside as the angel collapsed, leaning forward to prise the dead fingers out of Sam's arm. The Watcher touched the wound, bringing the two ends of the bone into line, and a flash of light and heat pulsed under Sam's skin, fusing the ends into a whole.

It wasn't like Castiel's healing, with the power of Heaven's souls behind it. The holes from the fingers were still visible in his muscle, but the break had been healed and the pain had lessened. Clambering to his feet, Sam nodded his thanks to the Watcher. The two of them continued together, as the others paired up instinctively as well, and the number of corpses mounted.


End file.
